The power of the proposition: frequency of marijuana offers, parental knowledge, and adolescent marijuana use

Abstract

Background: The frequency with which adolescents are offered marijuana has been investigated as a predictor of marijuana use. The current study was designed to test whether the number of marijuana offers received provides an indirect path between parental knowledge and adolescents' marijuana use.

Methods: Data from the nationally representative National Survey of Parents and Youth were examined. Analysis 1 tested the association between frequency of being offered marijuana and adolescents' (N=4264) marijuana usage in the subsequent year. Analysis 2, spanning a three-year time frame, tested whether the frequency of marijuana offers at the second year of the panel study bridged the relationship between parental knowledge in Year 1 and marijuana use in Year 3.

Results: Analysis 1 indicated that the frequency with which adolescents were offered marijuana predicted usage one year later, after controlling for previous usage and nine other common predictors of marijuana use. Analysis 2 revealed an indirect relationship between parental knowledge and use through the number of marijuana offers the adolescent received.

Conclusion: There was a strong link between the number of offers received and adolescents' future marijuana use. Higher parental knowledge predicted reductions in offer frequency, which was associated with lower levels of marijuana use. Reducing the number of marijuana offers an adolescent receives could serve as a useful focus for intervention programs targeting parents.

Keywords: Adolescent drug use; Marijuana; Offering; Parental knowledge; Parental monitoring.

Figure 1

Unstandardized coefficients and standard errors for the indirect effect of parental knowledge through number of times offered marijuana on marijuana use. Past marijuana use, age, gender, academic success, refusal strength, delinquency, sensation seeking, marijuana approval, cigarette use, and alcohol use at Year 1 (Y1) were used as covariates of marijuana use at Year 3 (Y3). Coefficients and standard errors in parentheses reflect the addition of marijuana use at Y1 as a covariate of being offered marijuana at Year 2 (Y2). *p < .001.