Listening to Music Linked to Marijuana Use

A new scientific study has determined that teenagers who listen to music mentioning the use of marijuana are very likely to actually start smoking the drug. In the experiments that led to this conclusion, more than 959 ninth-graders were followed for a period of time. This allowed the researchers to draw parallels between the music the youth listened to and their drug-use habits as well. During the research, more than 12 percent of participants said that they were current drug smokers, and other 32 percent said that they tried out the stuff before, LiveScience reports.

“Students who listen to music with the most references to marijuana are almost twice as likely to have used the drug than their peers whose musical tastes favor songs less focused on substance use. Interestingly, we also found that exposure to marijuana in music was not associated with other high-risk behaviors, such as excessive alcohol consumption. This suggests that there is a real link between the marijuana lyrics and marijuana use,” Dr. Brian Primack, the leader of the new study, says. The expert is a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

The science team that conducted the study took on a more unusual task, which was to analyze the marijuana-related lyrics from the songs that the teens reported listening to. According to the group, each of the teens in the experiments listened to more than 21.8 hours of music per week, with an average of around 40 marijuana references for the same time frame. The scientists also say that they were able to account for all other variables that might have tainted the results of the analysis, such as age, race, gender, parental education and school grades.

“Although it may be that heavy exposure to music about marijuana causes marijuana smoking, it may also be that those who smoke marijuana seek out music with lyrics related to marijuana,” Primack explains. Other experts say that the second variant is most likely closer to the truth, adding that marijuana smokers tend to look for the music that best describes their feelings, and do not pick up smoking drugs after listening to a song about it. The US National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Maurice Falk Foundation funded the new work, details of which appear in the latest online issue of the scientific journal Addiction.