Amotivational Syndrome

The belief that marijuana leads to a lack of willpower and motivation is a fairly old one, and in the United States, at least, it is probably connected with the early identification of marijuana with various minority groups and fringe elements, such as the beats and the hippies. This prejudice was greatly reinforced during the 1960s when many middle-class marijuana users also renounced ambition and upward mobility and seemed instead to be pursuing a passive and nonproductive life.
    The phrase "amotivational syndrome" was first used in 1972, by Dr. Louis West, chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at UCLA. It spread quickly through the mass media, although, two years earlier, the National Clearing House for Drug Information had reported that there were no significant differences in motivation or self-discipline between students who used marijuana and those who did not. A report issued the following month by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs claimed just the opposite.
    In 1972 both the annual Health, Education, and Welfare report on marijuana and health and the Shafer Commission took issue with the idea of the amotivational syndrome. The Shafer Commission also released data from the Jamaica study, which concluded that users in that country who had smoked several joints a day for many years were, if anything, more motivated than nonusers.
    In 1971 Joel Hochman and Norman Brill of UCLA studied the drug habits of fourteen hundred UCLA students and found no statistically significant differences in grade point average or educational achievement between users, even daily users, and nonusers They did discover that chronic marijuana users were more likely than other people to drop out of school, but upon their return they were as successful as nonsmoking students. A similar study at Berkeley during the early 1970s produced like results.
    In 1974 Canada's Le Dain Commission concluded that there was no connection between the use of marijuana and a lack of motivation, and a 1975 report by the Drug Abuse Council stated that after one year of decriminalization in Oregon, there was no evidence of decreased motivation among the users in that state.
    It should be noted, however, that most marijuana smokers do not feel especially motivated to work while under the influence of marijuana, preferring instead to listen to music, watch television eat, or socialize. An exception are those smokers who sometimes smoke marijuana deliberately before working, using it as a light stimulant. But most users do not smoke in circumstances in which a high degree of motivation is required.
    In addition, there are many people using marijuana who were amotivated long before they began smoking. Marijuana is a convenient symptom for an already unmotivated person to add to his list; amotivation is more often the cause of heavy marijuana use than its effect.