Domestic violence less likely among married couples who smoke pot

The annual prevalence rate of marijuana smoking in the U.S. as of 2009 was 13.7 million.

By Lisa Rennie, Daily Digest News
Wednesday, August 27, 2014

The more pot married couples smoke, the less likely that domestic violence occurs in their homes, according to new research.

Researchers at the University at Buffalo School of Public Health and Health Professions and Research Institute on Addictions (RIA) looked at data on a cross-sectional basis over a nine-year time period, in an attempt to identify why there have been inconsistent findings regarding domestic violence in homes with pot-smoking couples.

According to the World Drug Report 2011 (WDR 2011), the annual prevalence rate of marijuana smoking in the US as of 2009 was 13.7 percent.

The researchers discovered that the more often couples smoked marijuana (approximately two or three times monthly), the less frequent husbands engaged in violent behavior against their wives. The corelations between non-violence and pot use was most prevalent among women who had no previous history of antisocial behavior.

Lead investigator Kenneth Leonard, PhD, director of the UB Research Institute on Addictions, says it is the prolonged use of pot over time that is a predictor of domestic violence within the home, and not necessarily whether marijuana is used on any given day.

“These findings suggest that marijuana use is predictive of lower levels of aggression towards one’s partner in the following year. As in other survey studies of marijuana and partner violence, our study examines patterns of marijuana use and the occurrence of violence within a year period. It does not examine whether using marijuana on a given day reduces the likelihood of violence at that time,” said Leonard in a statement.

The findings of the study are published in Psychology of Addictive Behaviors.

Give Peace a Chance. We knew it all along.