Impact of Cannabis Use on Tobacco Addiction among Youth
San Diego — A recent study from the University of California, San Diego reveals that teenagers and young adults who use marijuana may have a significantly higher chance of becoming regular tobacco users. This research was published in the journal Tobacco Control this week.
The study indicates that roughly 13 percent of new regular tobacco use cases in the U.S. can be linked to cannabis use among younger populations.
“This research challenges long-standing beliefs about how cannabis and tobacco use are connected in younger individuals,” stated Karen Messer, Ph.D., a professor and director of biostatistics at the UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center.
In 2017, researchers examined data from over 13,800 participants aged between 12 and 24 who hadn’t used tobacco regularly before. Among those surveyed, 15% had reported cannabis use within the past year. Fast forward four years, and it was clear that those who used cannabis were much more likely to take up regular tobacco use compared to non-users.
“These results underscore the need to explore not just the immediate impacts of cannabis, but also how it influences tobacco initiation and dependencies,” Messer added.
Of young users aged 12 to 17, 32.7 percent who consumed cannabis went on to use tobacco regularly by 2021, which is nearly 15 percentage points higher than their non-cannabis-using peers. For young adults aged 18 to 24, the gap was smaller but still notable, with 14 percent of cannabis users eventually becoming regular tobacco users.
On a national scale, researchers estimate that over 500,000 young Americans might have sidestepped regular tobacco use if they hadn’t previously used marijuana.
While this observational study doesn’t definitively link cannabis use as a direct cause of tobacco use, it does highlight a potentially novel “reverse gateway” effect, suggesting that marijuana use could lead to the initiation of other addictive substances like tobacco.
The researchers acknowledged that additional factors—like peer pressure, socioeconomic status, and individual susceptibility to substance use—were not thoroughly examined and may influence the results.
Nonetheless, the authors argue that cannabis use in young people should be treated as a significant risk factor for future tobacco addiction, emphasizing that prevention strategies should target both substances concurrently.
The study was conducted by researchers at the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Geriatric Sciences at UC San Diego and was supported in part by funding from the University of California’s Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program and the National Cancer Institute.
The full study can be found online for those interested in diving deeper into the findings.
