Bad news for the whole ‘marijuana is completely harmless’ crowd. A new study out of Oceania finds that people who regularly smoked pot before the age of 17 were less likely to perform well in life than people who didn’t.
Of course, ‘perform well in life’ is a kind of nebulous term, but how else to describe the outcomes cited in the study? From Vox:
[Y]oung adults who used marijuana more frequently before age 17 were more likely to have worse outcomes by age 30 for high school completion, university degree attainment, suicide attempts, and other illicit drug use.
That’s kinda shitty. But at least you might be happy and not poor!
They found no correlation between adolescent pot use and depression or welfare dependence
As with any study of this nature, there’s always a chicken-and-egg type thing going on.
But a major caveat in the study is that correlation doesn’t equal causation. It’s possible that young adults who don’t complete high school tend to gravitate to marijuana, since it’s a relatively cheap, accessible form of entertainment.
So, if you are under 17 and already smoking pot, you’re fucked. Forever. Probably. But 17 and a day? Feel free to spark up for the first time. Then again and again.
I didn’t know about this study in the early 2000s, but boy am I’m glad I waited until summer before senior year, when I was almost 18.
What about you, though? I know you started smoking in high school. Everyone did. Did it ruin you?