A new study say yes — at least within the rigorous confines of a laboratory experiment.
While it remains to be seen how those findings apply to people who use cannabis and alcohol in everyday life, another question looms: Is replacing one intoxicating substance with another even a good idea?
The answer isn’t clear, not yet, anyway, but the timing of the question is relevant as more Americans experiment with being “California sober,” replacing alcohol with cannabis.
While the harmful effects of alcohol are well established — about 178,000 people in the U.S. die each yearTrusted Source from excessive consumption — the risks associated with rising cannabis use in the era of legalization are less well understood.
The study, which used a simulated bar environment as its laboratory, examined how smoking cannabis before drinking alcohol affected participants’ alcohol consumption.
Researchers found that, compared with a placebo, smoking a joint before drinking led participants to drink less and, in some cases, to report less desire to drink. The findings were published on November 18 in The American Journal of Psychiatry.
“Cannabis can reduce drinking in the short term, but it also carries its own risks. Our study is a first step, and we need more long-term research before drawing conclusions for public health,” said Jane Metrik, PhD, a professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Psychiatry at Brown University, and first author of the study.
“We do not yet know whether cannabis reduces drinking in daily life, where people encounter stress, social pressures, and varied environments,” she told Healthline.
Metrik and her coauthors are careful to point out that their study does not provide evidence that substituting marijuana for alcohol is good for your health.
Still, some experts not involved in the study worry that findings like these could encourage such behavior.
“I’d hate to see these findings interpreted as getting intoxicated on cannabis is better than getting intoxicated on alcohol,” said George Singletary, MD, an assistant professor of addiction medicine at the Tulane University School of Medicine.