In January 2023, members of the MAC Lab published an article in Health Communication about associations between viewing pro and anti-cannabis social media messages and teens’ and college students’ intentions to use cannabis. A WSU Insider piece by Sara Zaske described the research and was quickly picked up by other media outlets. The research has been covered in 47 news outlets. The results of that interest? The article has been viewed more than 4000 times!

A new article in Drug and Alcohol Review describes a MAC Lab experiment on the inclusion of sexualized appeals in cannabis advertising. The research team conducted an online experiment with college students in Washington state, showing participants brand-generated cannabis social media ads that included either images that contained sexual objectification of women or recreational appeals. Exposure to sexualized ads was associated with increased perceptions of cannabis sex enhancement scripts and increased cannabis sex enhancement expectancies. Full text is available in the journal.

Looking for a scale to measure sex-related cannabis expectancies? We just recently published a brief report in The Journal of Sex Research that described the testing of the sex-related cannabis expectancies scale across age and gender.