Dumb Hidden Assumptions in Drug Abuse Research

The mental health professions these days seem to want to blame their patients' repetitive problematic or self-destructive behavior on just about anything except what is, in the large majority of cases, the primary causes: family dysfunction and adverse childhood experiences (ACE’s). And I mean, they would rather it be almost anything else.

In my post of February 26, 2011, I discussed how a slight increase in aggressive thoughts following the playing of violent  video games by adolescents was translated by researchers into the games being a major risk factor for the development of youth violence. The fact that most compulsive video game players are inveterate couch potatoes who do not get out much never entered into discussions.

Not surprisingly, a recent longitudinal study (Fergus0n et. al., J. Psychiatr Res 2012; 46: 141-146), showed that, by taking other variables into account such as intra-family violence, the correlation between video games and even short-term aggression could no longer be established.  Another older paper from the same lead author (Ferguson and Rueda,  J Exp Criminol, 2009; 5:121-137) showed that aggressiveness in the laboratory, as expected, did not correlate with violent acts in real life.

Focusing on minor targets like video games risks leading social activists and public policy makers to ignore the far more important causes of youth violence like child abuse.

So of course, now that the tide is turning against the insane drug war against  marijuana, which has turned a significant percentage of the population into criminals (who tend to only be prosecuted if they happen to be African American), the folks who refuse to look at reality are now publishing "studies" that attribute a host of problematic behavior almost entirely to the devil weed – while all the while making the most ridiculous hidden assumptions imaginable. 

People who feel the need to be stoned all the time have enough problems; we do not need to make up a bunch of other ones.

In Carl Hart’s book High Price , he recounts his adventures as a reviewer of potential drug abuse studies for funding from the National Institutes of Health. He mentioned that the research agenda was being controlled by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). He makes it clear that they were only interested in studies that showed the dangers of street drugs, not on studies which countered the many myths in the field that he had described in the rest of the book. (NIDA also ignores the dangers of the very same drugs they demonize when Pharma sells them for conditions such as "ADHD").

Now comes a study out of Australia and New Zealand: “Young adult sequelae of adolescent cannabis use: an integrative analysis” by Edmund Silins and others. (Lancet Psychiatry, 2014;

1: 286–93). Here is the abstract:

Methods: We integrated participant-level data from three large, long-running longitudinal studies from Australia and New Zealand: the Australian Temperament Project, the Christchurch Health and Development Study, and the Victorian Adolescent Health Cohort Study. We investigated the association between the maximum frequency of cannabis use before age 17 years (never, less than monthly, monthly or more, weekly or more, or daily) and seven developmental outcomes assessed up to age 30 years (high-school completion, attainment of university degree, cannabis dependence, use of other illicit drugs, suicide attempt, depression, and welfare dependence). The number of participants varied by outcome (N=2537 to N=3765).

Findings: We recorded clear and consistent associations and dose-response relations between the frequency of adolescent cannabis use and all adverse young adult outcomes. After covariate adjustment, compared with individuals who had never used cannabis, those who were daily users before age 17 years had clear reductions in the odds of high school completion (adjusted odds ratio 0·37, 95% CI 0·20–0·66) and degree attainment (0·38, 0·22–0·66), and substantially increased odds of later cannabis dependence (17·95, 9·44–34·12), use of other illicit drugs (7·80, 4·46–13·63), and suicide attempt (6·83, 2·04–22·90).

Interpretation: Adverse sequelae of adolescent cannabis use are wide ranging and extend into young adulthood. Prevention or delay of cannabis use in adolescence is likely to have broad health and social benefi ts. Efforts to reform cannabis legislation should be carefully assessed to ensure they reduce adolescent cannabis use and prevent potentially adverse developmental effects.

Funding: Australian Government National Health

The authors claimed to control for confounding variables, but most of these "controlled" variables were unrelated to ACE’s or ongoing family chaos. They were such things as age, sex, ethnicity, socioeconomic status and mental illness. The authors did control for a few possibly relevant parental variables like alcohol use, tobacco use, divorces, and history of depression. But not for how the parents actually behaved around their children, how they treated their children, child abuse or neglect, how chaotic the home environment was, or how and how consistently the children were or were not disciplined.

What on earth makes people who draw the conclusion that the drug was the primary cause of the lower achievement become so stupid that they don't see that frequent drug use is a sign that the teens already had emotional problems before they even started smoking - and that it was these problems that predate the drug use that were the real cause of both the drug use AND the poor performance?

The authors used exactly one rather vague sentence in their discussion to refer to this possibility, which most readers will miss: “…cannabis use in adolescence could be a marker of developmental trajectories that place young people at increased risk of adverse psychosocial outcomes.” (p. 291). 

Ya think?