original article NewScientist

Stoners may be trading sexual highs for the chemical kind. Males who smoke marijuana daily are four times more likely to have trouble reaching orgasm than men who don’t inhale, finds a new study of 8,656 Aussies.

Other smokers had the opposite problem, experiencing premature ejaculation at nearly three times the rate of non-smokers, find a team led by Marian Pitts at La Trobe University in Melbourne.

Her team analysed data collected as part of a 2005 telephone survey of 16 to 64-year-olds. Overall, 8.7 per cent of respondents said they had gotten high in the last year, with twice as many men (11.2 per cent) admitting to marijuana use as women (6.1 per cent). People under 36 were more likely to smoke marijuana than older participants.

Even though many male smokers experienced sexual problems, they reported more partners than non-smokers. Marijuana users were twice as likely to have had two or more sex partners in the previous year than men who didn’t smoke pot.

Smoking in bed

Pitts’ team found an even stronger trend for increased sexual activity among female smokers, who were also seven times more likely to have been diagnosed with a sexually transmitted infection in the last year than non-smokers. However, female smokers had no more problems in the bedroom than abstainers, Pitts’ team found.

Her team’s results generally back up prior studies connecting increased promiscuity and sexual problems to marijuana use.

For instance, a 2007 study led by Marie Eloi-Stiven at Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York found that marijuana users were far more likely than others to take sildenafil (Viagra) recreationally. This is presumably to counteract the perceived libido-sapping effects of marijuana, her team concluded.

Complicating factors

However, the new study doesn’t establish a cause-effect relationship between marijuana and sexual performance, notes Sharon Johnson, an epidemiologist at the University of Missouri St. Louis, who has also found associations between drug use and sexual problems.

Many of the correlations between marijuana and sexual performance became apparent only after accounting for other factors, such as age, tobacco and alcohol use and occupation. “Why does it appear that the more marijuana you use the more sex difficulties you have,” Johnson asks. “There is a more complicated relationship out there somewhere.”

Medical effects of marijuana

Pharmacologically, it has been used in various medical preparations since ancient times and, even today, some advocate its use for relieving the symptoms of glaucoma, asthma, stiff muscles resulting from brain injuries and multiple sclerosis, and the toxic effects resulting from chemotherapy.

Side effects of using marijuana

The dried leaves can be smoked as a cigarette, the dried tops of the female plant full of resin smoked with tobacco.
A user may experience dry mouth, rapid pulse rate, high blood pressure, tremors, vertigo, loss of coordination, dry reddened eyes, dilated pupils, depression, moodiness, temporary amnesia (because of its suppression of the brain hormone vasopressin), an uncontrollable fear of death, and panic.
A1986 Italian study found that smoking one joint can increase melatonin levels in the body 4000 percent.

It is not physically addictive, but could result in psychological dependence, and habitual use could require higher and higher doses to achieve the same effects.
Hash smoke, especially when combined with tobacco smoke, can result in bronchitis and other respiratory ailments.
Additional dangers include buying marijuana laced with other drugs or the herbicide paraquat, or dealing with assassin bugs that tend to inhabit crops.
Some growers have been able to produce super¬potent strains that contain 20 percent THC, or almost double that of naturally grown plants.