A brand new examine of greater than 160,000 teenagers finds that even occasional hashish use amongst eighth, tenth and twelfth graders is tied to worse outcomes in school and extra emotional misery.
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Teenagers who use hashish usually tend to carry out poorly in school. They’re additionally extra more likely to have psychological well being signs of hysteria and melancholy. These are the findings of a brand new examine within the journal Pediatrics. NPR’s Rhitu Chatterjee has extra.
RHITU CHATTERJEE, BYLINE: The examine drew on survey knowledge from tens of 1000’s of eighth, tenth and twelfth graders between 2018 and 2022. The excellent news is {that a} majority – almost three-quarters – reported they didn’t use hashish. Dr. Ryan Sultan is a baby and adolescent psychiatrist at Columbia College and lead writer of the examine.
RYAN SULTAN: About 26% are reporting having had some hashish use in some unspecified time in the future.
CHATTERJEE: Solely 8% of the teenagers reported utilizing hashish usually.
SULTAN: The upper-frequency group are people who’re utilizing weekly or day by day or close to day by day.
CHATTERJEE: He says the others use it as soon as a month and even much less.
SULTAN: Most teenagers which can be utilizing hashish are low-frequency customers. And what we nonetheless discovered was poor tutorial efficiency seen in issues like GPA and truancy.
CHATTERJEE: They usually had no school plans. These teenagers additionally had the next probability of getting emotional misery and signs of hysteria and melancholy in comparison with those that did not use hashish.
Psychologist Krista Lisdahl research substance use in adolescence on the College of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Lisdahl wasn’t concerned within the new examine. She notes that the extra usually teenagers used hashish, the extra seemingly they have been to wrestle in school and emotionally.
KRISTA LISDAHL: It is as soon as once more extra proof of those dose-dependent hyperlinks between hashish use, particularly current almost day by day use, being linked with detrimental tutorial outcomes, emotional outcomes.
CHATTERJEE: She says current research by her and others present that the brains of teenagers who use hashish are totally different from different teenagers. Imaging research present variations in elements of the mind associated to government functioning, emotional regulation and drawback fixing. Lisdahl says one other discovering is that youngsters who use hashish…
LISDAHL: Have a tendency to point out this sample of getting to make use of extra of their prefrontal cortex to do a cognitive job. So it appears like their mind is working tougher to get the identical end result.
CHATTERJEE: Whereas research have but to point out that hashish causes these outcomes, Lisdahl says it does not change the message for teenagers.
LISDAHL: The message is to delay hashish use so long as you may, particularly whereas the mind is growing.
CHATTERJEE: And that improvement continues till age 25.
Rhitu Chatterjee, NPR Information.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
Copyright © 2025 NPR. All rights reserved. Go to our web site phrases of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for additional info.
Accuracy and availability of NPR transcripts might fluctuate. Transcript textual content could also be revised to right errors or match updates to audio. Audio on npr.org could also be edited after its authentic broadcast or publication. The authoritative report of NPR’s programming is the audio report.
