Cannabis reduces short-term motivation to work for money

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-09/ucl-crs083116.php

Public Release: 1-Sep-2016
Cannabis reduces short-term motivation to work for money
Smoking the equivalent of a single 'spliff' of cannabis makes people less willing to work for money while 'high'
University College London

Smoking the equivalent of a single 'spliff' of cannabis makes people less willing to work for money while 'high', finds a new UCL study.

The research, published in Psychopharmacology, is the first to reliably demonstrate the short-term effects of cannabis on motivation in humans. The researchers also tested motivation in people who were addicted to cannabis but not high during the test, and found that their motivation levels were no different to volunteers in the control group.

"Although cannabis is commonly thought to reduce motivation, this is the first time it has been reliably tested and quantified using an appropriate sample size and methodology," says lead author Dr Will Lawn (UCL Clinical Psychopharmacology). "It has also been proposed that long-term cannabis users might also have problems with motivation even when they are not high. However, we compared people dependent on cannabis to similar controls, when neither group was intoxicated, and did not find a difference in motivation. This tentatively suggests that long-term cannabis use may not result in residual motivation problems when people stop using it. However, longitudinal research is needed to provide more conclusive evidence."

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tags: drug abuse, drug use