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Teenagers and younger adults who use hashish usually tend to turn into common tobacco customers—even when they have not beforehand tried tobacco—in comparison with comparable individuals who don’t use hashish, suggests a US research printed on-line within the journal Tobacco Management.
Round 13% of latest onset tobacco use was estimated to be attributable to hashish, the research discovered.
Tobacco smoking has been thought-about a gateway to hashish use because the Nineteen Seventies, when smoking was rather more prevalent and when nearly all individuals who used hashish had smoked tobacco first.
Though tobacco use amongst teenagers and younger adults has declined significantly in the USA because the Nineteen Seventies, hashish use has not. This raises the query of whether or not a reverse gateway from hashish to common tobacco use may exist.
To analyze, the authors mined knowledge from an everyday survey of US households referred to as PATH (Inhabitants Evaluation of Tobacco and Well being) to take a look at the affiliation of hashish use by teenagers and younger adults in 2017 and their probability of standard tobacco use 4 years later in 2021.
A complete of 13,851 respondents aged 12–24 years who, in 2017, had mentioned that they had by no means or by no means recurrently used any type of tobacco (flamable or non-combustible) and who accomplished the next surveys have been recognized, of which 15.4% had admitted utilizing hashish within the final 12 months. The probability of hashish use elevated with the age of the respondent.
Every one that used hashish was matched to an analogous non-user in keeping with a lot of traits together with demographics, historical past of experimentation with tobacco merchandise, perceived harmfulness of cigarettes and psychological well being signs.
The research discovered that 32.7% of US teenagers aged 12–17 years who had used hashish had progressed to common tobacco use 4 years later—a rise of 15.6 proportion factors in contrast with their matched controls.
Among the many younger adults aged 18–24 years, 14% of those that used hashish reported common tobacco use—a rise of 5.4 proportion factors over their matched controls.
The evaluation attributed 13% of whole new common tobacco use to hashish and when extrapolated throughout the complete US inhabitants, the authors estimated that 509,800 fewer US teenagers and younger adults would have progressed to common tobacco use in 2021 if that they had not had earlier expertise of hashish in 2017.
That is an observational research, and as such, cannot set up trigger and impact, and the authors additionally acknowledge a number of limitations together with using self-reported measures for tobacco and hashish use.
Though a complete record of baseline covariates was thought-about, some elements resembling peer influences, socioeconomic elements and an underlying legal responsibility to substance use might not have been captured totally. Assessing hashish use prior to now 12 months slightly than present use can also be more likely to have attenuated the estimated impact dimension.
However, the authors conclude that hashish use by US youth is a significant threat issue for development to common tobacco use, impartial of whether or not or not they’ve but tried tobacco.
“The finding that prior cannabis use is a major risk factor for initiation of current regular tobacco use among youth, independent of whether or not they have tried tobacco, suggests that cannabis prevention should be included as a key goal in tobacco control programs,” the authors mentioned.
“While early cannabis use is seen as a major public health problem, none of the major health agencies have addressed the potential of early cannabis use to increase future regular tobacco use.”
They add, “This study provides evidence that failure to address cannabis use among young people has the potential to undermine the progress tobacco control efforts have made in reducing tobacco initiation and progression to regular use.”
Extra info:
Hashish use and development to common tobacco use amongst United States youth and younger adults: proof from the Inhabitants Evaluation of Tobacco and Well being (PATH) research, 2017–2021, Tobacco Management (2025). DOI: 10.1136/tc-2025-059634
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British Medical Journal
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Youngsters and younger adults who use hashish have a better threat of progressing to common tobacco use, research finds (2025, October 23)
retrieved 23 October 2025
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