'Religious Belief as protective factor against Drugs'

"At the army recruitment centre For their study on substance use in Switzerland, Gmel and his colleagues interviewed almost twenty-year-old men at army recruitment centres in Lausanne, Windisch and Mels between August 2010 and November 2011. The researchers have now evaluated the 5387 questionnaires completed by the young men. Based on the responses, the scientists split the young men into five groups: the "religious" believe in God and attend church services, the "spiritual" believe in a higher power, but do not practice any religion, the "unsure" do not know what to believe about God, the "agnostics" assume that no-one can know whether there is a God or not, and the "atheists" do not believe in God.

The researchers found that these groups deal differently with addictive substances. Among the 543 religious young men, 30% smoked cigarettes daily, 20% smoked pot more than once a week and less than 1% had consumed ecstasy or cocaine in the past year. Among the 1650 atheists, 51% smoked cigarettes, 36% smoked pot more than once a week, 6% had consumed ecstasy and 5% cocaine in the past year. The three groups that lay between these extremes were in the mid-range both regarding their religious beliefs and the consumption of addictive substances.

A protective influence For Gmel, these figures indicate that research into addictive behaviour should not only consider risk factors, but also protective factors. The results of his study show that belief is a protective factor when it comes to the consumption of addictive substances. Whether the differences between the groups can be attributed to the ethical values of the young men or to social control in the environments in which they live, remains unanswered."

(*emphasis added)

Source Here

So the researchers of this study want to make the claim that religious belief in God and church attendance (as indicators of being "religious") are "protective" factors against addictive substances.

So, I have to make a few preliminary assumptions about Switzerland and these kinds of studies and it is my contention that these assumptions are supported by statistical trends in this kind of research.

First, "religious" means Christian of whatever variety. "Spiritual" typically denotes those who have fallen away from the religion in which they were raised and in this context, 'spiritual' would represent those who have become disillusioned by Christianity and have sought other areas for meaning and ways of managing existential issues. Similarly, the 'atheists' of this study would fall under this category as well and have gone through a 'deconversion' process that is usually gradual and rationalized, reasoned, in their own ways to reach the conclusion they do. In other words, gradual conversions or deconversions tend to be much more cognitive than emotional.

My second set of assumptions is that by 'Drugs' they mean illegal drugs, although they included cigarettes, there is no mention of alcohol, painkillers, and prescription medication that is equally if not more addicting than the substances like marijuana, cocaine, and ecstasy. For example, Oxycontin is reported to be much more addicting than Heroin. So my assumption is that the researchers chose select drugs and made their claims from the research that followed. That is, I don't think they investigated alcohol or prescription drugs that falls very much under the "addictive substances" category.

Putting these two together, there are theoretical issues with the way it is conducting its methodology and the resulting claims from the research. Furthermore, observing that the "religious" or Christians are statistically less likely to use the substances investigated does not indicate that religion itself is a protective measure against them. This is simply correlation as opposed to direct causation with regard to the non-use of "drugs". However, it is not clear whether religion is a protective measure against alcohol abuse, prescription drug abuse, or other forms of abuse and addiction.

In this way, I find the claims made in this article about the study questionable and on the surface, quite problematic to make the bold claim they think their study measures. This is not to say that religion does not have an influence but that there are uncontrolled variables in the term 'drug', 'addictive substance', 'protective factor', 'belief', and the willingness to report on such things.