Nora Volkow spotlights violent marijuana consumers

The belief that smoking marijuana can lead to gratuitous acts of violence among young adults (18-34) was resurrected in April of this year thanks to a science publication by NIDA director Nora Volkow.

In it Dr. Volkow and her colleagues gathered data from the National Surveys on Drug Use and Health featuring 113,454 participants who revealed increases in associations with violent behavior in women ranging from 1.0 to 1.4-percent when correlated with various levels or categories and frequencies of cannabis use. For men, the increases ranged from 1.2 to 1.4-percent. News of the findings was seized upon by prohibitionist and Smart Approaches to Marijuana founder Kevin Sabet who gleefully announced that the data showed “nearly twice the violent behavior rate of non-users.”

So how did smoking marijuana—the weed that gave rise to popular use of the expression “mellow”—end up getting blamed for causing violence? In Dr. Volkow’s paper it happens because she uses data collected within the category defined as drug abuse with no consideration of any medical use.

With all cannabis use considered an abuse, the NIDA lumps medical users into single categories along with recreational users. Medical cannabis use in the U.S. comprises 50-percent of the total number who medicate with cannabis for anxiety and 34-percent who medicate for depression. Anxiety and/or trauma can trigger PTSD and depression. Unchecked, the maladies can sometimes impair the emotional regulation associated with aggression and violence. Anxiety triggers the fight or flight response. Marijuana in many cases can treat depression and anxiety disorders so its users would include those seeking a medication to cope with depression or being overstressed. They would stand out in studies in which the sole intention is to discover and quantify violent behavior among marijuana consumers. Such behavior facilitates the creation of anti-marijuana propaganda.

That the NIDA functions in many cases as a propaganda mill should come as no surprise to anyone who’s followed its act since the agency was first established in 1974 to advance the science of drug use and addiction. Instead of doing useful research, the NIDA emerged as a toxic brew of politics masquerading as science. By creating and publicizing misleading information and false alarms about cannabis and psychedelics it has succeeded in little more than preserving its own agency while adding to a large commercial and taxpayer-funded cash flow falling into the hands of drug enforcement grifters and profiteers.