Of the 17.1 million young Europeans who have used cannabis, 40% were French and aged 15 to 24, according to a study by the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction. In addition to the already known negative effects on the education of adolescents, researchers have studied the impacts of very early experimentation with cannabis on their professional situation in adulthood.
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France has one of the highest levels of cannabis use in the world, with almost 40% of 17-year-olds reporting use in the past year. While previous studies had shown light the existence of a possible causal relationship between the early initiation of cannabis use during adolescence and the level of study reached later, researchers from Inserm and Sorbonne University at the Pierre-Louis Institute of Epidemiology and Public Health looked at the impact of this early experiment on the employment situation at the adulthood.
The results of the study indicate that people who have used cannabis are more likely to experience a period of unemployment afterwards, especially if their initiation to the drug took place before the age of 16. The results, which relate to the follow-up of 1,500 people over nine years, are published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence.
Among the 17.1 million young Europeans (aged 15-34) who reported having used cannabis in the previous year, 10 million were between the ages of 15 and 24 (according to a report by the ‘European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction – 2017). Neuroscience research data showing specific lesions in adolescent users support the idea that there is a direct negative effect of cannabis use on concentration, motivation and, ultimately, performance. school success young people.
Cannabis use in adolescence and professional integration
Researchers from Inserm and Sorbonne University are now interested in the age of onset of cannabis consumption and its impact on the future professional integration of young people. Through data collected via the Tempo cohort (research project on health in the long course set up by public health researchers at Inserm), they identified an association between early experimentation with the drug (before the age of 16) and difficulties in finding employment in adulthood.
More specifically, the analysis focused on a sample of 1,487 young adults who were followed over a nine-year period, between 2009 and 2018 – study participants were aged 22 to 35 at the time of their inclusion in the study. 2009. On four occasions during this period, participants were asked about the age of their first cannabis use and their professional status. Other elements were also taken into account to avoid biasing the analysis, such as socio-economic level, family situation, school difficulties encountered during childhood and adolescence as well as the psychological evaluation of the participants.
The results suggest that people who reported initiating their use of cannabis at the age of 16 or before would be about twice as likely to experience a period of unemployment as an adult – here this adulthood corresponds to the 31-44 age group, with participants aged 22 at age 35 at the time of their inclusion in 2009 – than those who have never used cannabis.
While cannabis users who started using after the age of 16 are 39% more likely to experience unemployment as adults than those who have never used the drug.
Higher unemployment risks
Researchers were also interested in the potential impact of early cannabis use on the risk of experiencing repeated bouts of unemployment. People who started using cannabis at an early age were three times more likely to experience multiple spells of unemployment than those who said they had never tried cannabis.
Still according to the results of this study, the late experimenters of cannabis (aged over 16 when they first used cannabis) are 51% more likely to experience unemployment at least once compared to those who have never used cannabis and twice as likely to experience repeated episodes of unemployment.
Cannabis use before the age of 16 can therefore be considered a marker of unemployment risk.
Furthermore, by comparing early and late cannabis experimenters, the researchers found that the likelihood of experiencing repeated unemployment spells was 92% higher in the group of younger users, compared to those over the age of 16. years at the time of their initiation to the drug.
“These results add to the existing literature which shows that, in addition to the frequency of cannabis use, the age of the first cannabis experience is associated with adverse consequences not only on health but also on social and economic life of individuals. Cannabis use before the age of 16 can therefore be considered a marker of the risk of unemployment. Postponing cannabis experiments as late as possible should be an objective of public policies ”, explains Maria Melchior, Inserm research director and last author of the study.
Based on the data collected via the Tempo cohort over nearly 30 years, researchers now want to identify the predictive factors of cannabis consumption trajectories over time. This process is all the more important given that cannabis users who started during adolescence are more and more likely to continue this consumption in adulthood without the underlying mechanisms being well known.
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