The link between cannabis use and sex goes back a long way, at least in popular belief if not entirely in verifiable scientific fact. But a new study by researchers at the University of Connecticut and Georgia State University has found a possibly strong connection—and also a pretty good argument for legalizing pot.
The study shows that in states with medical marijuana laws, people have more sex—and also more babies, because in those “MML” states, people also become more likely to have sex without contraceptives, according to and abstract of the research paper posted online by Science Direct.
The study titled Sex, Marijuana and Baby Booms was published late last month by the Journal of Health Economics.
The study found another minor drawback to the effective decriminalization of cannabis. People in states where pot is effectively legal also have higher rates of gonorrhea.
“These changes may be attributed to behavioral responses including increased attention to the immediate hedonic effects of sexual contact, increased sexual frequency, as well as delayed discounting and ignoring the future costs associated with sex,” the study’s authors wrote.
In other words, getting stoned makes you want have more sex—but it also makes you care a lot less about having safe sex.
Specifically, the study found that after states enact medical marijuana laws, people in those states were 4.3 percent more likely to report having sex at least once in the past month. The spike in sexual activity happened “directly” after the MML took effect in the states with medical pot, according to a summary of the study by the pro-legalization Marijuana Moment site.
In those MML states, women “of childbearing age” saw a 2 percent rise in births—an average of 684 additional babies—per quarter.
Women respond to cannabis consumption better than men, sexually speaking, according a Yahoo! News report on the study. The researchers found that any dose of cannabis appeared to produce a boost in female sexual desire.
But for men, the libidinous effect was seen only in low doses of the drug. High doses of cannabis had a tendency to cause men to lose interest in sex.
Both the increase in birth rate, as well as gonorrhea rate, in medical marijuana states likely results from the “impaired judgment” associated with pot use, according to the study’s co-author, David Simon, who said that it appears that cannabis makes people want sex more, it also causes them to take fewer precautions before indulging newly heightened sexual impulses.
Photo By Marc St. Gil / Wikimedia Commons Public Domain
