Study of Canadian Workers Shows No Link Between Cannabis Use And Workplace Injury

Workers in Canada who have toked up recently don’t appear to have faced any greater risk of a workplace injury than those who abstained, according to a new study out this week, suggesting that cannabis use isn’t necessarily linked to sloppiness on the job.

Researchers from the University of Toronto found “no evidence that cannabis users experienced higher rates of work-related injuries,” and pending other prospective studies, they said that “occupational medicine practitioners should take a risk-based approach to drafting workplace cannabis policies.”

The study, published this month in Occupational Medicine, was based on observations of 136,536 working Canadians. Researchers said that they used “used multiple logistic regression modelling to calculate the odds of experiencing a work-related injury (defined as non-repetitive strain injury) among workers who reported using cannabis more than once during the prior 12 months as compared to non-users,” and then “repeated the analysis among participants working in high injury risk occupational groups only.”