ArticleJournal of epidemiology and community health2017
Patterns of cannabis use during adolescence and their association with harmful substance use behaviour: findings from a UK birth cohort.
Article in Journal of epidemiology and community health, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 44 papers.
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Who cites it
44 citing papers in PubMed, 97 citations in OpenAlex.
- Adolescents' substance use trajectories across the COVID-19 pandemic: implications of pandemic disruptions and other risk and protective factors.Child development · 2026Article
- Longitudinal neurocognitive trajectories in a large cohort of youth who use cannabis: combining self-report and toxicology.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Longitudinal Neurocognitive Trajectories in a Large Cohort of Youth Who Use Cannabis: Combining Self-Report and Toxicology.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Affective Instability and Regular Cannabis Use During Adolescence and Subsequent Risk for Psychosis in Early Adulthood: A Longitudinal Birth Cohort Study.Schizophrenia bulletin open · 2026Article
- Childhood events as factors in continued cannabis use in adulthood: a longitudinal study of a 30-year follow-up cohort.Journal of cannabis research · 2025Article
- Health Service Use Among Young Adults With a History of Adolescent Cannabis Use.JAMA network open · 2025Article
- Maternal Religiosity and Adolescent Substance Use: A UK Prospective Cohort Study.Journal of religion and health · 2025Article
- Association of childhood mental health and cognition with longitudinal patterns of cannabis problems in adolescence.Psychological medicine · 2025Article
- Adolescent Polysubstance Use and Co-Occurring Weapon Carrying, Bullying Victimization, and Depressive Symptomology: Patterns and Differences in the United States.Child psychiatry and human development · 2025Article
- Trajectories of Single- or Multiple-Substance Use in a Population Representative Sample of Adolescents: Association with Substance-Related and Psychosocial Problems at Age 17.Brain sciences · 2025Article
- Cannabis use characteristics and associations with problematic use outcomes, quitting-related factors, and mental health among US young adults.Substance abuse treatment, prevention, and policy · 2025Article
- Cannabis use in adolescence and young adulthood and its effects on brain structure and function: a scoping review.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Review
- Life-course Accumulated Cannabis Use and Recent Cannabis-related Problems in the Washington Panel Survey.Addictive behaviors · 2024Article
- Adult consequences of repeated nicotine and ΔPsychopharmacology · 2024Article
- Factors associated with cannabis use in early adolescence.Health promotion and chronic disease prevention in Canada : research, policy and practice · 2023Article
- Longitudinal patterns of polysubstance use throughout adolescence: association with adult substance use and psychosocial outcomes controlling for preadolescent risk factors in a male cohort.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2023Article
- Prevalence of sleep disturbance among adolescents with substance use: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health · 2023Article
- Adverse childhood experiences and adolescent cannabis use trajectories: findings from a longitudinal UK birth cohort.The Lancet. Public health · 2023Article
- Cannabis in Adolescence: Lasting Cognitive Alterations and Underlying Mechanisms.Cannabis and cannabinoid research · 2023Review
- A cross-national comparison of the linkages between family structure histories and early adolescent substance use.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundEvidence on the role of cannabis as a gateway drug is inconsistent. We characterise patterns of cannabis use among UK teenagers aged 13-18 years, and assess their influence on problematic substance use at age 21 years.
methodsWe used longitudinal latent class analysis to derive trajectories of cannabis use from self-report measures in a UK birth cohort. We investigated (1) factors associated with latent class membership and (2) whether latent class membership predicted subsequent nicotine dependence, harmful alcohol use and recent use of other illicit drugs at age 21 years.
results5315 adolescents had three or more measures of cannabis use from age 13 to 18 years. Cannabis use patterns were captured as four latent classes corresponding to 'non-users' (80.1%), 'late-onset occasional' (14.2%), 'early-onset occasional' (2.3%) and 'regular' users (3.4%). Sex, mother's substance use, and child's tobacco use, alcohol consumption and conduct problems were strongly associated with cannabis use. At age 21 years, compared with the non-user class, late-onset occasional, early-onset occasional and regular cannabis user classes had higher odds of nicotine dependence (OR=3.5, 95% CI 0.7 to 17.9; OR=12.1, 95% CI 1.0 to 150.3; and OR=37.2, 95% CI 9.5 to 144.8, respectively); harmful alcohol consumption (OR=2.6, 95% CI 1.5 to 4.3; OR=5.0, 95% CI 2.1 to 12.1; and OR=2.6, 95% CI 1.0 to 7.1, respectively); and other illicit drug use (OR=22.7, 95% CI 11.3 to 45.7; OR=15.9, 95% CI 3.9 to 64.4; and OR=47.9, 95% CI 47.9 to 337.0, respectively).
conclusionsOne-fifth of the adolescents in our sample followed a pattern of occasional or regular cannabis use, and these young people were more likely to progress to harmful substance use behaviours in early adulthood.
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