Youth marijuana use: a review of causes and consequences
Introduction
With medical and recreational marijuana use becoming more widespread, a concern has been whether increased availability of marijuana may have unintended consequences for young people who use marijuana before they become adults. To better understand the etiology, patterns, and consequences of adolescent marijuana use, this article reviews the scientific literature examining causes, trends, and consequences of youth marijuana use. Much of this research examines etiologic factors for adolescent marijuana use, including parent-child relations (i.e. attachment), parenting (i.e. discipline and monitoring) and the home environment (i.e. marital strife), peer social influences, and personality factors that contribute to use. We also review the large literature on patterns and trajectories of youth marijuana use. Finally, we highlight key studies on the physical and mental health [1••,2] consequences of marijuana use, including whether prolonged or excessive use interferes with psychosocial adjustment and disrupts adult role socialization. A careful review of the literature reveals that prominent areas of concern have included effects of chronic use on neuropsychological functioning (i.e. cognitive impairment), whether marijuana is a gateway drug and leads to other substance use, its contribution to psychiatric problems and also substance use disorders. In this paper we briefly review these different literatures with a special emphasis on evidence obtained from naturalistic longitudinal studies that monitor development over time.
Marijuana is quite popular worldwide and remains the most commonly used illicit drug by US youth. The latest annual US national surveillance data shows that 44% of high school seniors have used marijuana in their lifetime, more than one in three seniors used marijuana in the past year, and more than one in five used marijuana in the past 30 days [3•]. This proliferation in consumption is matched by the highest levels yet of past 30-day daily use (1.3%, 4.8% and 6.4% among 8th, 10th, and 12th grade youth, respectively); a trend paralleled by continued annual declines in perceived risks associated with use. There is also concern that many youths replace nicotine with marijuana (THC or hash oil) in battery-powered vaporizers [4,5], a pattern that has been noted with increasing frequency in both regional [6] and national surveys of youth vaping preferences [3•,7].
Section snippets
Etiology of adolescent marijuana use
The linkages between personality and marijuana use has historical precedent stemming from the return of soldiers from Vietnam and a nationwide surge in activism and protest activity during the 1960s. The changing political climate and movement toward anti-establishment norms fostered interest in the role of alienation (i.e. sense of isolation), social criticism (i.e. anti-establishment sentiments), and tolerance for deviance as personality factors that interact to socialize problem behaviors [8•
Developmental trajectories of adolescent marijuana use
Numerous longitudinal studies using person-centered strategies have identified discrete trajectories of marijuana use [28, 29, 30, 31,32••]. Although the number and composition of trajectory subgroups may vary from study to study, one consistent finding heralds a prototypical ‘chronic or persistent’ marijuana user group (usually encompassing only 5–10% of the total sample but with some noted exceptions [33,34]). Chronic users are characterized by early onset and continued increasing marijuana
Consequences of adolescent marijuana use
Confusion over whether marijuana has long-term consequences has promoted considerable debate and led to a changing political landscape with regard to its legalization. In all but 11 US states marijuana remains a federally classified Schedule I substance under the Controlled Substance Act owing to its high potential for abuse [45,46••]. Notwithstanding, 33 states have responded to the popular ground swell urging legalization of marijuana based on its therapeutic potential including treating
Conclusions
A consistent body of evidence suggests that early initiation and sustained chronic use of marijuana conveys numerous deficits including impaired well-being, negative health effects, impairment to cognitive functioning, and increased risk of psychiatric problems. For the most part, these findings hold up even with the addition of important control measures capturing different facets of interpersonal and intrapersonal functioning. Importantly, studies using a longitudinal developmental
Conflict of interest statement
Nothing declared.
References and recommended reading
Papers of particular interest, published within the period of review, have been highlighted as:
• of special interest
•• of outstanding interest
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Lawrence M Scheier: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing - original draft, Visualization, Supervision. Kenneth W Griffin: Investigation, Writing - review & editing.
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge their affiliated institutes for continued support during construction of the manuscript and providing the necessary resources to complete the current study. Neither author declares a conflict of interest.
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2022, Drug and Alcohol DependenceCitation Excerpt :to focus on youth who are more at risk. For example, youth who have previously used marijuana may have been more susceptible to risk factors (i.e., parent marijuana use) (Scheier and Griffin, 2021), as well as to the deleterious effects of marijuana use (i.e., mental health problems, D’Amico et al., 2016; Ladegard et al., 2020). Criterion (b) was also required for methodological reasons to avoid extreme proportions of missing data about 70%, in the case of including youth who had never used marijuana in its cohort, leading to serious problems for the structural equation modeling.
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