Married Couples Who Smoke Marijuana Less Likely to Have Domestic Violence Issues

Domestic violence is a costly problem in the US. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) say that the cost of domestic violence against women exceeds $5.8 billion a year, which includes $4.1 billion in direct costs such as medical and mental health care costs, and another $1.8 billion in indirect costs, such as lost productivity.

Anything that can be done to reduce domestic violence should be greeted with a positive embrace, but that might not be the case with new research published in Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, which shows domestic violence is less likely to occur in homes where more marijuana is smoked over long periods of time.

The research was conducted by the University at Buffalo School of Public Health and Health Professions in conjunction with the Research Institute on Addictions (RIA) which looked at data over a nine year period. They wanted to know why over the years there has been inconsistent findings regarding domestic violence in homes with couples who smoke marijuana. They found couples who smoked marijuana more often (at an approximate rate of two to three times a month) were less likely to have domestic violence perpetrated by the husband toward the wife. They also found a correlation between marijuana and lack of domestic violence to exist where the women had no previous history of any type of antisocial behavior.

The research doesn’t say that smoking marijuana will lessen the chance of domestic violence occurring on a particular day the drug has been smoked, but that the prolonged use of marijuana over years can be used as a way of predicting the chance of domestic violence in the home.

As Kenneth Leonard, PhD, and the director of the UB Research Institute on Addictions says, “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.”

(Photo courtesy of Katheirne Hitt)