IS POT A REAL BUMMER? STUDY DOESN'T THINK SO

UAlbany Professor Part Of Research Linking Drug To Being Less Depressed;
Feds Blast Findings

ALBANY -- Why the long face?

Not smoking pot, perhaps?

University at Albany psychology professor Mitchell Earleywine and Thomas F.
Denson, of the University of Southern California, recently completed a
study finding that people who smoke marijuana are less depressed than those
who never smoke.

The respondents were in three categories: those who have never smoked,
daily smokers and weekly smokers. Both daily and regular uses said they
were less depressed.

The online study, which involved 4,400 people, was supported by a grant
from the Marijuana Policy Project, a group that supports legalizing and
regulating the drug. The findings are to be published in the journal
Addictive Behaviors.

The findings surprised Earleywine.

"I expected that depression would be even, that the groups wouldn't differ
at all," Earleywine said. "I never thought the users would be less depressed."

Federal drug officials said Earleywine's work was biased. A policy analyst
for the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy said the
UAlbany professor is a committed pot-advocacy researcher whose survey was
suspect because too many hard-core users responded to it.

Earleywine co-authored a study in September showing that marijuana use
among teenagers falls in states that allow medical marijuana. And, indeed,
his latest work flies in the face of other work that has linked marijuana
to depression.

He cautioned that his research doesn't mean that weed will make troubles go
away. Chances are, the type of person who smokes marijuana just happens to
be the type of person who doesn't depress easily.

"They may just have a more mellow attitude about everything," Earleywine
said. "So if they're less concerned about cannabis, they're probably less
concerned about other things."

The study did find that people who use marijuana for medical reasons are
more likely to be depressed than other smokers -- not surprising, perhaps,
given that they're smoking because they're sick. They were less depressed
overall than nonsmokers, though.

While Earleywine said his research is clear evidence that marijuana doesn't
lead to depression, government officials said he was wrong.

"I'm not at all surprised that people who are daily smokers self-report
that they feel pretty good," said David Murray, a policy analyst with the
White House drug office. Marijuana alters users' body chemistry so they get
miserable after they stop, he said.

For anybody out there still tempted to light up to stave off depression,
though, Earleywine suggested they shouldn't.

"I don't think that's a good idea," he said. "We've got good cognitive
therapies that will treat depression in three months."