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Published: 02 September 2021

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Background: Vulnerability to COVID-19 hospitalization has been linked to behavioral risk factors, including combustible psychoactive substance use (e.g., tobacco smoking). Paralleling the COVID-19 pandemic crisis have been increasingly permissive laws for recreational cannabis use. Cannabis use disorder (CUD) is a psychiatric disorder that is heritable and genetically correlated with respiratory disease, independent of tobacco smoking. We examined the genetic relationship between CUD and COVID-19 hospitalization.

Conclusions: Problematic cannabis use and vulnerability to serious COVID-19 complications share genetic underpinnings that are unique from common correlates. While CUD may plausibly contribute to severe COVID-19 presentations, causal inference models yielded no evidence of putative causation. Curbing excessive cannabis use may mitigate the impact of COVID-19.

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Published: 25 August 2021

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Results: Higher average exposure to MM advertising was associated with higher average use, intentions to use, positive expectancies, and negative consequences. Similarly, higher rates of change in MM advertising exposure were associated with higher rates of change in use, intentions, expectancies, and consequences over seven years.

Conclusions: Results suggest that exposure to MM advertising may not only play a significant role in shaping attitudes about marijuana, but may also contribute to increased marijuana use and related negative consequences throughout adolescence. This highlights the importance of considering regulations for marijuana advertising, similar to regulations in place for the promotion of tobacco and alcohol in the U.S.

(Dalgarno Institute Comment: Permission models always and without exception create a level of psycho-social contagion leading to a higher chance of product engagement. Permission is still the most effective founding motivator for consumption in play  and corporations have known this for well over 150 years.

American writer and cultural critic Ambrose Beirce commented around the turn of the 20^th  century that, “A Corporation is an ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.” These corporations have also understood (and particularly the addiction for profit industries) like alcohol and tobacco, that kids must be your target audience. Big Tobacco player R.J. Reynolds stated in in 1975 that, “Share penetration among 14 –24 age market….represents tomorrow’s cigarette business”. And the now famous principle authored by CEO Bennet Leslow of the Brook Group is that, “If you are really and truly not going to sell to children, you are going to be out of business in 30 years.”

Big Tobacco 2.0 – Big Cannabis – are desperate to get their addiction for profit product into the currents of trade, alongside the other socially acceptable drugs that do the greatest harms (because they are legal and socially acceptable) alcohol and tobacco. As you see with the above study and many others, the pernicious process is only the beginning of the harms that will come from this highly engineered substance.)

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Published: 24 August 2021

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Press release issued: 19 August 2021

Teenagers who use cannabis frequently may be more likely to have children born preterm, when they become parents up to twenty years later, finds a new University of Bristol-led study. The research, published in Scientific Reports, repeatedly assessed 665 participants in a general population cohort on their tobacco and cannabis use between ages 14 to 29 years, before pregnancy.

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Published: 24 August 2021

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