Teens Who Smoke Pot, Drink Alcohol Have Less Potential As Adults

Teenagers who abuse alcohol and marijuana are probably not going to do much with their lives, according to new research.

Scientists were investigating the link between dependency on those two drugs and life achievements when they found that the young adults they were studying, who had problems with alcohol and pot, were less likely to move beyond a low education level, get married or find full-time employment. That research, which is still preliminary, was presented this week at the American Public Health Association’s annual conference, according to the University of Connecticut, and could shed more light on the effect of teenage substance abuse later in life.

The researchers analyzed data on almost 1,200 people from around the U.S. taken between the age of 12 and their early to late adulthood, some as late as 34 years old. The majority of those kids, whose information was part of a database dedicated to information on the genetics of alcoholism with the National Institutes of Health, had a close relative who was an alcoholic, such as a parent or grandparent. A number of the subjects were dependent on alcohol or marijuana while they were teenagers, and the data revealed those drug abusers did not go as far in their education, had less socioeconomic potential and did not as often get married as teens without those dependencies or addictions.

– Elana Glowatz

Image by Michael Discenza from Unsplash