Cannabis intervention project receives NIH backing

A communication project that aims to reduce cannabis misuse among young adults recently earned a National Institutes of Health grant of nearly $670,000.

With the three-year award, Washington State University researchers will refine and test a technology-based intervention aimed at young people in three states where cannabis has been legalized. The project has a particular focus on cannabis edibles, which have become increasingly popular and whose effects are often misunderstood.

"With legalization, cannabis-infused products have proliferated, and so has cannabis-related marketing and advertising. What our prior research has shown is that adolescents and young adults are not necessarily educated consumers when it comes to cannabis," said Stacey Hust, WSU professor in the Murrow College of Communication.

Hust and Jessica Willoughby, also a Murrow faculty member, are co-principal investigators on the grant.

Murrow College Dean Bruce Pinkleton said: "This NIH funding is a career grant for Dr. Hust and Dr. Willoughby. These Murrow College faculty members are outstanding researchers, and their NIH funding is a testament to the strength and quality of their work. Their work is important, and I expect their success to continue."

The project grew out of years of work led by Hust and Willoughby, who run the WSU "MAC" Lab on media, adolescents, and cannabis. The team has co-directed the research group for approximately 8 years, conducting multiple projects that have received internal and external grants and contracts, including from the WSU and Washington state's Dedicated Marijuana Account grant program. The Lab's past research included surveys of young adults, including in-depth interviews, in partnership with King County to understand what they knew about cannabis edibles and how they interpreted cannabis edibles packaging, in particular. The answer, unfortunately, was clearly not enough.

Scientists have long known that cannabis can interfere with brain development and cognition, and the human brain continues to develop until age 25. Regardless, cannabis use continues to be popular among young adults with one study showing 53% of college students had used cannabis in their lifetimes and 26.2% in the past month.

This led the team to develop an intervention, essentially a mixed media video and a PowerPoint presentation hosted by a former cannabis marketer. It seeks to not only highlight the health risks but also help reduce harm by debunking myths and empowering users to better assess cannabis products for themselves- including THC content and portion sizes. For example, the intervention points out that many people often think a common brand of cannabis-infused soda represents one serving, when it actually contains 10. It highlights the importance of reviewing labels, which the teams' previous work and the work of others have often shown isn't a priority for young people.

Preliminary results from a proof-of-concept study showed the intervention positively influenced cannabis knowledge and confidence in the ability to use cannabis responsibly as well as increasing awareness of health risks.

The NIH grant will allow the WSU researchers to further refine the intervention with focus groups and assess its efficacy by running tests with larger groups of young people. In addition to WSU, the researchers will also test it out with college students in Illinois and New York, where cannabis has also been legalized. The team will also develop modules of the training that could be tailored to the regulations and consumer environment of each state. The NIH grant will also allow the researchers to add interactive components to the intervention to improve its appeal to college students.

"By having the funding to do this type of project, we can take this intervention that we've developed and tested successfully with a small sample and now see if it can have a larger public impact," said Willoughby. At the conclusion of this grant, the researchers hope to secure additional funding for a national clinical trial that will evaluate the intervention's impact on actual use and misuse.

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