New Scale For Measuring The Effects Of Cannabis Could Bring Diverse New Research To Scientific Community

Asking someone how high they are isn’t really a good indicator of how powerful or weak a substance can be, and new research wants to change the way we approach high individuals.

A report from PsyPost explains that researchers are now starting to develop a different kind of scale that adapts young adults’ modern language to measure how effective or weak cannabis can be.

The research was published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence and steers away from asking the common question, “how high are you?” or “on a scale of 1-10, how high do you feel”?

Instead of asking rather general questions, the researchers created a scale that includes four anchors regarding the vast effects of marijuana: relaxed, calm/chill, high, and stoned/baked.

Renee Cloutier, a scientific director for the Program Evaluation and Research Unit at the University of Pittsburgh, and her team gathered 161 young adults. They gave them a 14-day diary tracking the effects of cannabis use and which method of ingestion they utilized.

“This study aimed to validate a new four-anchored item that uses contemporary young adult language to assess subjective cannabis effects in daily life,” Cloutier explained to PsyPost.

She added that the “cannabis consumption-subjective effects link was stronger on vape-only days relative to blunt-only days. Our findings reinforce the need to update and expand our assessments of cannabis effects to align with the language used by young adults (e.g., calm/chill, high, stoned/baked), rather than focusing narrowly on ‘degrees of impairment’ or ‘intoxication’ as well as account for variability in effects by mode of administration.”

Cloutier added that the team assessed “subjective cannabis effects” one day following their use, and she notes that it is “possible” that some individuals could not remember their exact effects and feelings one day after dosing marijuana.

The lead author, Cloutier, concluded, “As expected, cannabis consumption levels were positively associated with the revised subjective cannabis effects slider and this association was moderated by mode of administration.”