You don't have to dig deep into a WSU study to know that marketing works. But this one hits different because it's not about selling a car or a soda. A new Washington State University study published in *Communication Research* found that cannabis ads linking the drug with sex and intimacy are influencing young adults' intentions to use it before sex. The researchers point out something obvious once you hear it: alcohol advertisers have had guidelines against tying booze to sexual success for years. Cannabis marketers have no such rules. So the ads run, and the messages land, and the researchers are asking what that means for sexual decision making and consent.
This is the kind of work that reminds you why Pullman punches above its weight. The same university that had researchers figuring out A baby's skin microbes might tip off Coug researchers to early allergies and tracking how WSU study: hedgehog virus jumps to cats but spares humans is also the one asking how a legal, marketed substance shapes private behavior. That range is the point. We don't just study what's in the ground or the sky. We study what's in the room.
Here's the take: if you're a young adult in 2025, you are seeing cannabis ads that treat intimacy like a product benefit. The study suggests that exposure to those ads shifts intentions. That is not an abstract finding. It means the next time a friend tells you they use cannabis before sex because it "feels better," part of that reasoning might have a commercial origin. The WSU researchers are not saying cannabis is bad. They are saying the marketing around it is unregulated in a way that alcohol marketing is not, and that gap has consequences for how people make decisions about consent and sex.
Watch for what happens next. Industrywide guidelines do not write themselves. This study gives regulators and public health people something to work with. Meanwhile, keep an eye on how dispensaries and edibles brands talk about intimacy. If they pull back the language, you will know the research landed. If they do not, you will know why the study was necessary in the first place. Go Cougs.