Marijuana Users Less Likely to Engage In Domestic Violence

A team of researchers tracked
domestic violence among 1990s newlyweds. One notable finding? In
their first year of state-sanctioned coupledom, 37 percent of
husbands admitted to some sort of physical aggression against their
wives. Most of it was only “moderate” aggression, according to lead
researcher Kenneth Leonard—things like pushing or slapping—yet this
still seems like a surprisingly high amount. On the less surprising
side of things, however: Pot-smoking wives and husbands
were significantly less likely to lash out
physically. 

The researchers’ original hypothesis was that marijuana use
would increase incidences of intimate partner violence
(IPV) among married couples. To test this hypothesis, the team of
Yale, University of Buffalo, and Rutgers researchers tracked 634
New York newlyweds for nine years. The results: 

• more frequent marijuana use by husbands was linked to less
  violence from husbands
• more frequent marijuana use by husbands was linked to less
  violence from wives
• more frequent marijuana use by both husbands and wives was
  linked to less violence from husbands

The only group for which marijuana use was not linked to less
violence perpetration was wives who had a history of pre-marriage
partner violence. Couples in which both spouses reported consuming
marijuana frequently had the lowest IPV rates.

Obviously this doesn’t mean marijuana makes people less violent
per se—maybe the types prone to pot-smoking are just inherently
less violent individuals; or perhaps the types prone to partner
violence are categorically less drawn to the drug. But it is
interesting to contrast these stats with
numbers on alcohol, which has frequently been linked to
increased incidences of partner violence. In one
recent study, published in the journal Addictive
Behaviors in January 2014, researchers found that “on any
alcohol use days, heavy alcohol use days (five or more standard
drinks), and as the number of drinks increased on a given day, the
odds of physical and sexual aggression perpetration” by college-age
men in relationships increased. Alcohol was also linked to
“psychological aggression,” but “marijuana use days did not
increase the odds of any type of aggression.”

But studies showing little link between marijuana and aggression
haven’t phased the feds. As
High Times points out, the National Institute on Drug
Abuse (NIDA) last year “appropriated nearly $2 million in funding
for a four-year study to assess whether marijuana use” is
linked with partner violence.