There are a lot of myths out there about how marijuana really affects us, and those myths seem more present than ever now that cannabis is becoming legal in more and more states. Now, one of those myths has been debunked and it's pretty good news: there doesn't seem to be a link between smoking marijuana and experiencing increased anxiety.

Broadly reports that scientists found a pretty major flaw in the various studies that showed marijuana was linked to increased anxiety, showing that actually the link is pretty weak. Dr. Conal Twomey, a U.K.-based researcher at the University of Southhampton, found that most studies that showed there was a strong link between weed and anxiety used only known marijuana smokers as their subjects. That, he said, muddied the results because it was impossible to know whether marijuana was actually related to developing increased anxiety, or if people with anxiety are more likely to use marijuana.

To figure it out, Twomey analyzed 10 studies that did use a wider range of people, concluding that the actual link between anxiety and pot isn't very strong.

"The odds of developing elevated anxiety symptoms were 1.15 times higher for more frequent cannabis users than less frequent or non-users," he told Broadly. "This is a significant yet very small odds ratio."

This means that smoking weed could lead to increased anxiety, but it also might not. What makes this significant is that flawed science is often used to promote or discourage policy. There are definitely some drawbacks to smoking, including potential allergies or marijuana-related illness, but for some people marijuana is an effective medical treatment. Instead of using studies to stoke fear, we should be using them to determine what the pros and cons of legalizing marijuana actually are. That way, we can know whether legalization would have public health benefits and is worth it, or if it would all go up in smoke.

Related: More Teens Are Smoking Marijuana Than Cigarettes, a New Study Reveals