Does Teen Cannabis Use Lead to Behavior Problems – or Vice Versa?

Authored by annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org and submitted by mvea

More youth use cannabis than smoke cigarettes in the United States. In other parts of the world, cannabis use has become almost as regular as tobacco use among adolescents and young adults.

With relaxed laws governing cannabis use in many U.S. states and localities, there is mixed and limited research on whether increasing legalization could lead to other unhealthy behaviors in addition to substance use disorders.

Now, new research led by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania finds that cannabis use among teens does not appear to lead to greater conduct problems or greater affiliation with other teens who smoke cannabis, associations that previous research had suggested to be possible.

Instead, it’s the other way around: It is adolescents with conduct problems or whose friends use cannabis who are more likely to gravitate toward cannabis use. And that “cascading chain of events” appears to predict cannabis use disorder as the teens become young adults, according to the study, published in the journal Addiction.

“Cannabis use in and of itself does not appear to lead to conduct problems or increasing attraction to peers who use cannabis,” said coauthor Dan Romer, research director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC).

The study follows a group of Philadelphia adolescents over eight years. “Previous studies have not been as able to isolate the effects of cannabis use in adolescents,” Romer added. “But because we had measurements over the entire period of adolescence, we were able to disentangle the effects of cannabis use itself from other influences.”

The research uses data from the Philadelphia Trajectory Study, a six-wave study that began in 2004 with interviews of nearly 400 10- to 12-year-olds in Philadelphia. The adolescents were tested annually from 2004 to 2010, and then again in 2012 for a final two-year follow-up. The current study uses data from 364 teens from the final four waves of the study. The observational study is based on self-reports from the adolescents which were then validated by urine screening.

Ivy Defoe, the lead author and former APPC postdoctoral fellow, said, “Interestingly, the results show that not only do conduct problems such as school truancy and theft predict cannabis use, but adolescents who display conduct problems are also drawn to cannabis-using peers. These affiliations predict increases in cannabis use and, eventually, cannabis use disorder, as our results show,” added Defoe, now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Twente, the Netherlands.

Defoe said some theories would suggest that teens with conduct problems may be using cannabis as a coping mechanism to deal with disapproval of their behavior problems and perhaps to self-medicate. The study concludes that if youth with conduct problems “use unprescribed cannabis to cope with their condition, then healthier alternative coping strategies and support should be made available.”

One concern about use of an illegal drug is that it will lead adolescents to socialize with deviant peer groups, such as those who sell and use illegal drugs. However, the study suggests that adolescents using cannabis are no more likely to start affiliating with peers using cannabis.

The findings do suggest that with increasing legalization, there will be greater access to cannabis and thus a greater likelihood for youth to develop cannabis use disorder. However, just as with alcohol, which is legal for adults, research conducted as part of this project suggests that less than a quarter of youthful users would develop a mild cannabis use disorder.

“Disentangling longitudinal relations between youth cannabis use, peer cannabis use, and conduct problems: developmental cascading links to cannabis use disorder” is published open access in the journal Addiction.

In addition to Defoe and Romer, the coauthors are Atika Khurana, Ph.D., an APPC distinguished research fellow at the University of Oregon, and Laura M. Betancourt, Ph.D., and Hallam Hurt, M.D., of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

The research was supported by grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

deadflow3r on November 27th, 2018 at 14:45 UTC »

I'm wondering what percentage of these use vapes. The FDA and CDC have made vaping nicotine a huge issue, but if there is more marijuana use I'm wondering just how that skews the numbers on vaping if the PATH study is not carving this out separately.

kalesaji on November 27th, 2018 at 14:06 UTC »

please don't forget that weed has an influence on the development of the brain. Drugs should not be used by those still developing their brains.

mvea on November 27th, 2018 at 12:24 UTC »

The title of the post is a copy and paste from the first, third and fourth paragraphs of the linked academic press release here:

More youth use cannabis than smoke cigarettes in the United States.

Now, new research led by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania finds that cannabis use among teens does not appear to lead to greater conduct problems or greater affiliation with other teens who smoke cannabis, associations that previous research had suggested to be possible.

Instead, it’s the other way around: It is adolescents with conduct problems or whose friends use cannabis who are more likely to gravitate toward cannabis use.

Journal Reference:

Ivy N. Defoe, Atika Khurana, Laura M. Betancourt, Hallam Hurt, Daniel Romer.

Disentangling longitudinal relations between youth cannabis use, peer cannabis use, and conduct problems: developmental cascading links to cannabis use disorder.

Addiction, 2018;

DOI: 10.1111/add.14456

Link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/add.14456

Abstract

Aims

To determine whether cannabis use during adolescence can increase risk not only for cannabis use disorder (CUD) but also for conduct problems, potentially mediated by exposure to peers who use cannabis.

Design, Setting, Participants

Longitudinal study analyzing four waves of longitudinal data from 364 racially and socio‐economically diverse, urban, US community youth (at baseline: Mage = 13.51 (0.95); 49.1% female).

Measurements

Self‐reports of cannabis use, conduct problems, proportion of peers using cannabis and CUD criteria at the final wave were analyzed using a method sensitive to changes over development, the random‐intercept cross‐lagged panel model.

Findings

Change in cannabis use did not predict changes in conduct problems or peer cannabis use over time, controlling for gender, race–ethnicity and socio‐economic status. Instead, increases in conduct problems predicted increases in cannabis use and ultimately CUD, with some of the effect mediated by increases in the prevalence of peer cannabis use [β = 0.12, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.07, 0.20]. Additionally, affiliation with peers who used cannabis predicted subsequent CUD via increased personal cannabis use (β = 0.08, 95% CI = 0.04, 0.14). Significant within‐person betas for the cross‐lagged effects ranged between 0.20 and 0.27.

Conclusions

Cannabis use in adolescence does not appear to lead to greater conduct problems or association with cannabis‐using peers apart from pre‐existing conduct problems. Instead, adolescents who (1) increasingly affiliate with cannabis‐using peers or (2) have increasing levels of conduct problems are more likely to use cannabis, and this cascading chain of events appears to predict cannabis use disorder in emerging adulthood.