Vox - Another study has found strong correlations between adolescent marijuana use and a range of bad outcomes, including a lower chance of completing high school and a greater likelihood of trying other illicit drugs.
The analysis — one of the biggest of its kind on the issue of marijuana — looked at data from three large, long-running longitudinal studies in Australia and New Zealand. Researchers found that, after controlling for 53 factors ranging from socioeconomic differences to mental health, young 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. They found no correlation between adolescent pot use and depression or welfare dependence.
... 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. Or perhaps people who use harder drugs
are simply more likely to use pot on a daily basis to supplement other
drug use, not that marijuana use leads to harder drug use.
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