There should be a rule when it comes to reporting the findings of a scientific study: if the article doesn’t link to the paper, it’s probably trying to stop you from reading it for yourself.
This is extremely applicable to some of the coverage in the papers this week of a new study by drugs researcher Wayne Hall, which looks at the cumulative findings of studies of the effects of cannabis usage from 1993 to 2013. Hall is the director of the Centre for Youth Substance Abuse Research at the University of Queensland, Australia, and an advisor to the World Health Organisation on drug issues – credentials which the Daily Mail has been keen to emphasise in its melodramatic writeup that “demolishes claims that smoking pot is harmless”. The Mail‘s deputy editor, Tony Gallagher, was pretty strident about his paper’s front page this morning too:
- If you’re high, you’re two to three times more likely to crash your car
- If you smoke weed when pregnant, it might reduce your baby’s birth rate slightly
- There’s no clear pattern that smoking when pregnant causes birth abnormalities
- Smoking regularly as a teenager could lead to a slight drop in IQ in later life
- Teenagers who smoke weed do worse in school
- Those who smoke marijuana are more likely to do other drugs, including tobacco and alcohol
- Regular cannabis smokers run a one in ten chance of becoming addicted
- That chance is one in six if they’re adolescent
- Smoking cannabis could double the risk of developing schizophrenia or psychosis
- There is a correlation between cannabis use and increased suicide risk
- It’s unclear if smoking cannabis damages the lungs
- Middle-aged and older people should be careful smoking weed because it could damage the heart
- It’s unclear if lung cancer risk is increased by smoking cannabis
- Men who smoke possibly have a higher risk of testicular and prostate cancers
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