Bong hits for popularity?

More bad news for drug warriors: another new study! This one finds that teens who smoke marijuana but not cigarettes are emotionally healthier in some ways than those who abstain entirely and than those who use both.

The research, which was published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, surveyed some 5,000 Swedish students and found that the marijuana-only smokers had healthier relationships with their friends and were more likely to play sports than abstainers-- and there was no negative effect of marijuana use alone on grades. In fact, the stoners who didn’t smoke cigarettes were less likely to drop out of school, compared to abstainers.

As Jacob Sullum points out on Reason’s blog, if the results had gone the other way, drug warriors would have undoubtedly touted the study as proof that marijuana reduces grades and hurts relationships, given their propensity to confuse correlation and cause.

The truth, however, is more likely to be far more prosaic: in a world where roughly half of kids try marijuana, an obvious reason for not doing so is simply social isolation and peer rejection. If peers don’t bother to pressure you, you might not try drugs, but this is not, a la Martha Stewart, a good thing.

Earlier longitudinal research has found similar patterns: kids who experiment are typically healthier, not only compared to heavy users but compared to non-users. In fact, those who will ultimately fall on the extremes of non-use or heavy use can be spotted as early as preschool: they are the loners and the kids with behavior problems, respectively, (although obviously there is some overlap between these groups and many preschoolers outgrow problems).

What this means is that marijuana use itself shouldn’t be seen as a cause for alarm-- most kids will drink and/or smoke pot at some point before graduating high school and sending a teen to treatment who doesn’t need it can do harm. Worry about the extremes: heavy use or a social isolation so deep that the question doesn’t even arise.