Here’s what happens when people smoke weed at workplace

If you are working in a start up with relaxed work culture or into a creative firm, nobody knows better than you that there is at least one person in each team who are serious about weed. There would be one guy, tall and lanky, with crew cut hair or long locks and a cheek full of beard and what’s the other feature – he would quite defensive when you say weed destroys people. He would justify how weed makes people creative and they stay focussed on their work.

As a few countries in the west are legalizing weed in workplace, it’s often deemed as a major threat to work culture in many new organizations. But to reveal the truth, scientific studies have proved that getting stoned make you a slow performer and you are less likely to work hard even if lured with cash bonus.

In the research, the participants were asked to tap spacebar on a keyboard 30 times in seven seconds, or 100 times in 21 seconds. They were paid 50 penny for each easy task and 2 Pound for the difficult one.

It was found that participants who weren’t stoned selected the harder task and completed it. However in contrast, the stoners took the easy task and their success rate was 40%.

One of the researchers, Professor Val Curran of University College London (UCL), said: “Repeatedly pressing keys with a single finger isn’t difficult, but it takes a reasonable amount of effort, making it a useful test of motivation”.

In another task, researchers compared 20 “cannabis-dependent” people with 20 non-users. None of them were allowed to consume anything more intoxicating than coffee and cigarettes for 12 hour before the study.

This time, there was no difference between the two groups and their preference for which test to do – proving that low motivation was only present when under the influence.
Dr Will Lawn, another of the UCL researchers, said that this was the first time the assumption that cannabis reduces motivation has been reliably tested.
“It has also been found that long-term cannabis users might also have problems with motivation even when they are not high,” Lawn added.

“However, we compared people dependent on cannabis to similar controls, when neither group was intoxicated, and did not find a difference in motivation.

“This tentatively suggests that long-term cannabis use may not result in residual motivation problems when people stop using it. However, longitudinal research is needed to provide more conclusive evidence."