Frequent marijuana smokers have more sex: Study

Don’t bogart that joint: A study shows that pot smokers have more sex.

Published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, the study was led by Stanford University urologists Michael Eisenberg and Andrew Sun, who sought to evaluate the link between marijuana and sexual activity.

“Marijuana use is increasingly prevalent in the United States. Effects of marijuana use on sexual function are unclear, with contradictory reports of enhancement and detriment existing,” the researchers said in the study.

Dr. Eisenberg, who specializes in male sexual reproduction, said he has counseled patients about the effects of marijuana in much the same way as he talked about the risk factors associated with tobacco.

“When I went back to the literature, I realized there wasn’t a lot written about it,” he said of the impetus to start the study. “It’s interesting to find the opposite.”

The notion of marijuana as an aphrodisiac is a popular belief, but rigorous scientific study of pot’s effects on the libido is scarce. Evaluated biological effects of marijuana on men and sexual reproduction have found lower sperm counts for frequent users and erectile dysfunction at certain high doses.

A 2016 study in the Journal of Sexual Medicine found that the majority of female respondents who used marijuana before sex reported “a better overall sexual experience, an increase in sex drive and a more pleasurable orgasm with minimal effect on lubrication.”

In the latest study, Drs. Eisenberg and Sun surveyed more than 50,000 men and women over the age of 25 who had participated in the National Survey of Family Growth over three time periods: 2002, 2006-10 and 2011-15.

The researchers examined answers by respondents on how many times they had had sex in the month before the survey and how often they smoked marijuana in the past year — either “never, less than once a month, monthly, weekly, and daily.”

The researchers found that women who smoked marijuana daily had sex 7.1 times in the past month compared to nonsmokers, who reported having sex six times on average. For men, daily marijuana users had sex an average of 6.9 times in the past month, where nonsmokers had sex 5.6 times.

When the researchers accounted for different compounding factors — single, in a relationship or married — or other substance use or different demographics, this did not meaningfully change the overall results.

“This association was seen really however we looked at it,” Dr. Eisenberg said. “It seems to touch all Americans.”

An estimated 22.2 million people in the U.S. have smoked or smoke marijuana, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Medical marijuana is legal in 29 states and the District of Columbia, and its recreational use is allowed in eight states and the District.

The researchers said in the study that marijuana “does not appear to impair sexual function” and is “independently associated with increased sexual frequency.”

“Although reassuring, the effects of marijuana use on sexual function warrant further study,” they concluded.

Why marijuana is associated with increased sexual frequency is the “million-dollar question,” Dr. Eisenberg said, adding that inconclusive data have resulted from efforts to evaluate marijuana’s effect on the brain and arousal sensors.

Dr. Suzanne Sisley, a medical marijuana researcher, said the rudimentary study’s data are promising. Dr. Sisley, who evaluates how marijuana can help ease symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, said that her patients also report a “much improved libido, even improved erection and ability to maintain erection longer.”

“For men, particularly around erectile function, it may be dose dependent. Less seems to be more,” she told The Washington Times in an email. “These studies are often so rudimentary that they really don’t address dosing, which like most [medications], is key. I think the researchers often don’t have enough practical experience with cannabis to know that dosing is important.”

Among the study’s implications, Dr. Sisley said, is a better understanding of cannabis as an aphrodisiac amid a market shift from traditional pharmaceuticals.

“Imagine if Pfizer [which makes Viagra] had to compete with an unpatented plant that was available generic and inexpensively,” she wrote. “This early research should make them feel slightly uncomfortable about their long-term revenue stream.”