Addiction to coffee trumps smoking weed

April 22, 2015 5:18 PM

An expert has argued that coffee’s addictive effects connotes that it might actually be a more harmful drug than weed.

Drinking coffee

Most people who have tried weed would tell you it can be really addictive and they would be right.

Even with this well known fact, an expert has argued that coffee’s addictive effects mean that it might actually be a more harmful drug than weed.

Matthew Lazenka, a researcher at Virginia Commonwealth University Health System argues that caffeine ticks off as many boxes as for drug abuse as THC, the active ingredient in cannabis.

‘Caffeine produces withdrawal effects in humans,’ he says. ‘Caffeine has a similar profile as THC in producing abuse-related effects and may also be a gateway drug.

Lazenka argues that in some rat experiments, caffeine actually comes out as worse and wonders, why weed is classified as a ‘hard’ drug but caffeine is not.

‘One difference between caffeine and THC, however, is that caffeine more reliably produces abuse-related effects in preclinical rodent models.

Lazenka – an expert in the effects of THC – wrote an essay to question why weed is classified as Schedule I, the American equivalent of Class A, when it fails some of the tests for being ‘addictive’.

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