File: Results from the latest NOI Poll showed that 9 in 10 Nigerians believe the highest abusers of drugs and substance are teenagers and young adults aged between 15 and 29 years old.It has also emerged true from this poll that the most abused substance in Nigeria is marijuana.

By Sola Ogundipe

Do you know that abuse of alcohol and marijuana in one phase of life can affect your next generation, even long after you may have stopped using them?

Group partners FCTA to train 30 pupils on healthy living(Opens in a new browser tab)

This is exactly what scientists at the University of Washington’s Social Development Research Group, SDRG, have discovered by showing how a parent’s use of marijuana, past or present, can influence their child’s substance use and well-being.

“The really important takeaway is that parent history of marijuana use is an important risk factor for kids,” said Marina Epstein, lead author of the study and a project director at the SDRG.

The study, published in the journal Psychology of Addictive Behaviours, builds off previous work that had grouped participants according to whether, when and how often they used, and examined impacts to their health and behaviour.

Anxiety in Zaria over proposed bill to ban sale, consumption of alcohol(Opens in a new browser tab)

That study found four distinct patterns: “nonusers”; “adolescent-limited” (confined to only that period of life); “late onset” (starting in their late teens, early 20s); and “chronic” (ongoing and frequent).

This study is based on a subset of the original participants who have become parents, and has linked parents’ past use of marijuana to their children’s use of and attitudes toward alcohol and marijuana, other problem behaviour, and school achievement.

The original investigation involving parents began in the 1980s when the now-adults were in fifth grade at several Seattle elementary schools. Researchers have followed the participants ever since.

In 2002, when the participants were 27, SDRG recruited those who had become parents and began interviewing their children about alcohol beginning at age 6, and marijuana starting at age 10. To date, 360 children completed interviews between the ages of 10 and 20.

It was discovered that children and teens of chronic users were most likely to use alcohol and marijuana themselves, as researchers had predicted. But what came as more of a surprise was the behaviour of children whose parents had primarily used during adolescence: Compared to the children of nonusers, children of adults in the “adolescent-limited” group were more than 2.5 times as likely to use marijuana and 1.8 times as likely to use alcohol. This was true even after parents’ current marijuana use was accounted for.

In comparison, children of chronic users were nearly 4.5 times as likely to use marijuana, and 2.75 times as likely to use alcohol, as children of nonusers.

Children in the “late-onset” group, as it turned out, were least likely to use marijuana, as were children of nonusers. They did, however, have lower grades.

“Using marijuana in adolescence is associated with a host of other problems in the present and later into adulthood,” said Epstein, who was the lead author on the earlier paper that established the marijuana usage patterns. “Now we see that echoing through to their children.”

According to that prior study, people who used marijuana during their teen years tended to have poorer functioning during the period in which they were actively using, and, by their early 30s, to have lower academic and economic outcomes than people who started using as adults, or who never used.

Teacher drags ex-husband to court for refusing to pay children’s school fees(Opens in a new browser tab)

Chronic users had the worst outcomes in terms of health and quality of life, Epstein added: Poor mental health, lower academic outcomes, less financial stability and greater tendency of criminal and/or risky behaviours were associated with frequent, lifetime marijuana use.

Vanguard