Few sources link rage with use of marijuana

Few sources link rage
with use of marijuana

Dear A.M. Costa Rica:

Tuesday's front page story on the student run-in at Universidad de Costa Rica made the claim that ". . . Some students were fueling their rage with marijuana."

As a health professional with 35 years experience in substance use treatment and research, I am surprised by this claim. I checked the Library of Medicine's archives just to refresh my memory on this subject, and confirmed that there is at best a tenuous link between aggression and marijuana in the scientific literature, and that the few articles to discuss such a link were written, for the most part, decades ago, when little was known about the effects of marijuana.

Now, as to the incident itself, rage is far from the only feeling expressed at large gatherings, even when the original situation might result from anger. I suggest that many participants were there to "have a party." The fact that so few participants were arrested or injured enough to require medical treatment supports this.

I believe that your reporters were editorializing, and allowed a bias against marijuana to distort their view of the facts.


John French