No, Smoking Pot Doesn’t Relieve Anxiety

Sorry, aging hipsters, smoking pot doesn’t necessarily make you less anxious. In fact, it often does the opposite. The Wall Street Journal reports on the paucity of credible research that supports the anxiety relief theory and on a couple of recent studies that suggest that pot makes us more anxious, not less. It cites a review of research published in 2020 in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry that found that smoking pot was significantly associated with increased odds of developing anxiety, and another review published in 2018 in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry that found that recent cannabis use was associated with more severe symptoms in people with anxiety and mood disorders. And oh yeah, it points out that many people who tout pot’s anxiety relief potential are in the business of selling the stuff.