Letter to the Editor: Parental Behaviors and Cannabis-Related Harm Reduction in College

Dear Editor,

The changing legality and normative beliefs regarding cannabis use in the United States will necessitate revisiting many previously established research findings. At this point, despite federal considerations, 18 states currently allow recreational cannabis use (all liberalized since 2012) and 36 states currently allow medicinal use. As such, cannabis use among young adults, in many places in the United States, can be (or soon will likely be) conceptualized as similar to alcohol use, with each being legal but with misuse causing considerable individual and societal harms. Prior research on cannabis use in adolescence and young adulthood has found that greater use is associated with poorer physical health, internalizing concerns, and/or academic concerns. ¹

Cannabis use is increasingly endorsed by adolescents and young adults, ² but the potential for risk remains. It is likely that parental goals for their adolescent child's cannabis use will need to switch from complete abstinence to a harm reduction approach. These dueling perspectives predominate the literature on parenting and youth alcohol use ³ and will likely be increasingly evaluated in the youth cannabis use literature. The goal of the current investigation is to evaluate a potential mechanism by which parents might maintain a healthy influence on their child's risk behaviors while they are away at college in the current shifting cannabis environment. Specifically, we performed analyses examining parenting effects on cannabis abstinence and harm reduction in a survey study of college students.

Importantly, our study focused on ensuring that the measurement of our variables of interest matched the actual research question. To represent parental involvement in the lives of their college-age children, we made use of the recently developed parental active tracking scale, ⁴ which consists of eight items asking about specific behaviors parents can engage in while their children are in college to stay abreast of their activities without limiting youth autonomy. These behaviors include asking specific questions about activities, meeting youth's friends, and requiring youth communication.

To address college student cannabis-related activities, we made use of the Daily Sessions, Frequency, Age of Onset, and Quantity of Cannabis Use Inventory. ⁵ This scale provides significant detail regarding frequency of use, as well as quantity of cannabis used per occasion (using a color visual scale showing quantities of cannabis relative to the scale of a dollar bill). We also collected data on student demographic characteristics (age, gender, race [coded White vs. students of color], and Hispanic ethnicity), as well as measures of perceived mother–child and father–child relationship quality (adapted from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1997 and published elsewhere ⁶ ).

We first sought to examine the extent to which parenting behaviors are associated with whether or not a student has ever used cannabis. This was performed using logistic regression predicting lifetime use. We then focused on only individuals who have used recently (past 30 days), and performed linear regression modeling on frequency of use in the past month and quantity of use per occasion.

We surveyed 331 college students aged 18 to 24 years at a mid-sized university in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. The majority of the sample identified as a woman (69%), racially White (76%), and non-Hispanic (90%). The most common majors represented among these students were nursing (n=86, 26%) and psychology (n=48, 15%). A total of 155 students (47%) reported lifetime use of cannabis. Students were recruited from an undergraduate psychology class, and received partial course credit for completing the survey. Informed consent was provided by all participants, and the study was approved by the SUNY Brockport Institutional Review Board.

Results of the logistic regression predicting lifetime use showed that, when accounting for demographics and general parent–child relationship quality, parental active tracking behaviors were not significantly related to whether or not a student has ever used cannabis (p>0.05). Overall prediction of lifetime use was relatively weak for this model (Nagelkerke R²=0.06). However, when we narrowed down our focus to only students who report use in the past month (n=93), a different pattern of results emerged.

Frequency of use in the past month was not associated with parental active tracking (p>0.05). In contrast, greater parental active tracking efforts were associated with lower quantity of cannabis used per occasion (standardized b=−0.32, p=0.021). Prediction in this model was much stronger (R ² =0.30, p=0.013).

These findings highlight a potential role that parents, in the changing cannabis-related environment, may play regarding the cannabis use of their children while they are away at college. Similar to other behaviors viewed as risky during adolescence, changing cultural norms and legality may require a parental shift toward behaviors that mitigate harm (e.g., lower quantity of cannabis per occasion) rather than seek to eliminate the behavior. By engaging in defined behaviors seeking to gain knowledge of youth behaviors, parents may be able to foster an environment where youth engage in less risky cannabis use.