What is the purpose of the study?

The purpose of the study is to better understand factors that influence cannabis use and related risks and benefits of cannabis use.

Who can participate?

Participants must be:

At least 18 years old

A 23andMe® customer or an Ancestry.com customer who has had DNA testing

What will I have to do?

Read and agree to the Informed Consent letter, which explains the study goals, what data we collect, and how we protect your data.

Answer a brief (< 5 minutes) online survey about cannabis, nicotine, and alcohol use. You will not be asked for your name, and you may skip questions.

Donate your 23andMe® or AncestryDNA® genetic data for this research using our secure upload link.

How do I provide my 23andMe® genetic data?

You can either download the data yourself and upload it to the study (see instructions below), or you can provide your 23andMe username and password to the study to automatically download the data for you. If you choose the automatic download option, your username and password will not be retained by the study.

Instructions for downloading 23andMe genetic data yourself:

  1. Go to https://you.23andme.com/tools/data . You will be asked to enter your 23andMe username and password to sign in to your account.
  2. Click Download on the top of the page
  3. Scroll to the bottom of the page to Request Your Raw Data Download, click the checkbox to indicate that you understand the limitations and risks and then click “Submit Request”. (If you have recently requested your data, you will already see a button for “Download raw data”; please skip to step 6.)
  4. When your 23andMe raw data is ready to download you will receive an email notification at the email address associated with your 23andMe account.
  5. Open this email and click the Download Raw Data button. This will take you to your 23andMe account.
  6. . In your 23andMe account, click Download raw data.
  7. The file will be downloaded to your computer.  It will save to your My Downloads or Downloads folder, or to a folder that you specify.
  8. The file will be downloaded in the form of a zipped (.zip) text file, and its name begins with genome. If you don’t see it, try searching for a file containing the word genome. This is the file you will upload into the study survey when asked.

How do I provide my AncestryDNA® genetic data?

To provide your AncestryDNA genetic data to the study, you must first download it from Ancestry.com and then upload the file to the study.

Instructions for downloading your genetic data from Ancestry.com

  • Go to https://www.ancestry.com and sign in to your Ancestry account.
  • Click the DNA tab and select Your DNA Results Summary
  • Click Settings in the top-right corner.
  • Scroll down to the bottom of the DNA Settings page and click Download under Actions.
  • Enter your Ancestry password, click the checkbox to indicate that you understand the risks of downloading your data, and click the Confirm button.
  • When your DNA data is ready to download, you will receive an email from Ancestry at the email address associated with your Ancestry account.  This typically takes about 5 minutes and occasionally longer.
  • Open this email and click the Download DNA Data button.
  • This will take you to your Ancestry.com account. (You may be prompted to sign in to your account again.) Click the Download DNA Data button on the Ancestry page.
  • The file will be downloaded to your computer. It will save to your My Downloads or Downloads folder, or to a folder that you specify.
  • The file will be named dna-data-(date).zip (for example, dna-data-2022-01-15.zip) or AncestryDNA.txt.  If you don’t see either of these files, search for the file name. This is the file you will upload into the study survey when asked.
Why should I participate?

By participating in this study, you are joining researchers in their efforts to understand medically important effects of cannabis. This kind of research is made possible by volunteer participants like you. Results from this research could help inform and improve effective and safe use of cannabis for medical purposes.

What are my risks and benefits of participating?

The main risk to you is an accidental breach of confidentiality. We use multiple safeguards to keep your information secure.

You will likely not benefit personally from being in this study. We hope that others will benefit in the future from what researchers learn by analyzing study data.

There is no cost to you and you will not be paid for participating.

If I participate now, can I stop later?

If you participate, you may stop at any time by closing your internet browser. Data placed in the study database cannot be removed, but you can stop additional data from being added. The survey also allows you to skip questions that you do not wish to answer.

Are participants compensated?

Sorry, our study does not offer compensation to participants.

To go to the study Home page, click HERE or click the title at the top of this page: “Cannabis Effects Genomic Study”.