Is Mountain Dew really a lot more dangerous than mary jane?

The provocative question in the title of this post is prompted by provocative new research appearing in this forthcoming article due to be published in the peer-reviewed journal Injury Prevention.  (Many thanks to a kind reader for forwarding to me the link to this piece.)  The article carries the title “The ‘Twinkie Defense’: the relationship between carbonated non-diet soft drinks and violence perpetration among Boston high school students.”  Here is the abstract:

Objectives: To investigate the association of carbonated non-diet soft drink consumption and violence perpetration in a sample of Boston adolescents.

Methods: In a survey of Boston public high schools, respondents were asked how often they drank non-diet soft drinks and whether they had carried a weapon or engaged in physical violence with a peer.  Regression analysis was used to determine the role of soft drink consumption in these behaviours.

Results: Adolescents who drank more than five cans of soft drinks per week (nearly 30% of the sample) were significantly more likely to have carried a weapon and to have been violent with peers, family members and dates (p<0.01 for carrying a weapon and p<0.001 for the three violence measures).  Frequent soft drink consumption was associated with a 9–15% point increase in the probability of engaging in aggressive actions, even after controlling for gender, age, race, body mass index, typical sleep patterns, tobacco use, alcohol use and having family dinners.

Conclusions: There was a significant and strong association between soft drinks and violence.  There may be a direct cause-and-effect relationship, perhaps due to the sugar or caffeine content of soft drinks, or there may be other factors, unaccounted for in our analyses, that cause both high soft drink consumption and aggression.

I do not recall having ever seen behavioral research that shows a “significant and strong association” between pot consumption (as opposed to pot sales) and violent behavior.  That is why my post title seriously wonders whether those seriously concerned about reducing violent crime ought to be perhaps more interested in pop prohibition than pot prohibition.  

At the very least, this research indicating a “significant and strong association between soft drinks and violence” could and should (1) provide some additional support for a “soda tax” added to all drinks with high sugar and caffeine content, and (2) prompt anyone who has previously criticized Michelle Obama’s healthy eating campaign to recognize there could be important connections between reducing unhealthy consumption by young people and reducing violent behavior by young people.

UPDATE:  A helpful reader points me to this 2004 Rand working paper on marijuana and crime, which reviews some prior research on pot and crime and makes lots of interesting additional points.  Here was one notable portion of the Rand discussion:

Overall the findings from the reduced form models would suggest that marijuana use is positively associated with property and income-producing crimes and that no causal association exists between marijuana use and violent crime.