Cannabis consumption does not affect productivity
Musicians and artists have been consuming cannabis for a long time to improve their creativity. But how does the drug affect more conventional work from nine to five? Now that cannabis is legal in more places, including Canada and several US states. UU., Research on how people’s productivity affects work are being carried out.
A recent article discovered that the use of drugs after work did not affect the performance or productivity of people the next day. The research explored how cannabis consumption at different times of the day affected people’s ability to complete tasks and meet the requirements of their work, as well as their behavior towards their colleagues and their attitude towards their work.
Cannabis consumption after work did not affect any of the performance measures in the workplace. However, perhaps as expected, when people consumed cannabis before and during the work, they were not doing so well.
The drug interfered with its ability to perform tasks, affected its concentration and reduced its ability to solve problems. It had a negative effect on the ‘citizen behavior’ of the people: the probability that they would help their colleagues or work as a team. And also increased the propensity of people to counterproductive behaviors, such as dreaming awake at work and taking excessive time to perform a task.
Better than alcohol?
As with alcohol, where consuming a liquor compared to a beer will not only affect the speed of poisoning but the impact that this has on operation, the cannabis effect will vary according to the product.
The study does not provide many details about the amount of cannabis consumed by the participants, only they used it before, during or after work. So we know little about the fact that cannabis consumption begins to negatively affect work performance. However, it challenges the stereotypes of cannabis consumers as lazy and demotivated.
Research on alcohol in work performance is much more extensive. It shows how to drink after work and drink in excess, in particular, negatively affects the work in many ways. These include reduced productivity, higher levels of absenteeism, inappropriate behavior and worse relations with co -workers.
This new research on cannabis and productivity, although limited, is an important step towards investigating the effects of drugs in society. It goes beyond the historically raw evaluations of cannabis consumption, which would simply ask the participants if they had ever consumed cannabis or not and then draw conclusions based on this simplistic group. This clearly omitted the various doses and the frequency of use.
However, research in this area is complicated, since it is likely that people who consume cannabis also consume or have a history of consumption of other substances, such as alcohol. Therefore, it is difficult, if not impossible, in some cases unravel what substance is associated with an effect on performance.
Implications for drug tests
Cannabis consumption is not a niche activity. It is believed that approximately 20% of Americans have consumed drugs, while in Europe cannabis remains the most popular drug after alcohol, whether legal or not. It is well known that cannabis reduces stress and helps people relax, so it is likely to be an attractive antidote for a stressful work day.
If companies have drugs related to drugs, they should be based on tests and be specific to the needs of work. The effects of cannabis on coordination is an area that is more problematic. Like alcohol, drug reduces motor skills, reaction times and people’s eye-man coordination.
Unlike alcohol, there seems to be no residual negative effects in coordination on the day after consuming cannabis, unlike alcohol. But another study at the beginning of this year found that the excessive and chronic consumption of cannabis was associated with a worse driving performance in non -poisoned drivers. This is because the drug can affect the necessary motor skills for long -term safe conduction.
This evolutionary field makes things difficult for employers who have drug detection test policies for their employees. Because most medications break down very rapidly in the body, the tests are designed to identify chemical substances called metabolites, which remain after the medication decomposes and can be detected weeks after use.
This means that an employee could have consumed cannabis during the holidays, for example, then be subject to a drug test at work weeks later and face a disciplinary action when the test shows a positive result, although the drug is not affecting its performance.
To fill this void, there are applications that provide an alternative method to evaluate deterioration by measuring changes in task performance. This can be a more reliable and efficient way to verify if cannabis and other drugs are really damaging someone’s job performance. Waiting for the entire workforce to refrain from doing so is not realistic and will restrict the group of talents from which employers can hire.
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