Unroyal Highness: New study says teenage weed-smokers are liable to be less successful adults

Smoking weed (Marijuana) as a teenager can hamper one’s future chances of landing a good job with a large salary, mainly by interfering with one’s education, a new study of twins has found.

Going by the findings of the study, a teenager who uses more marijuana than his/her identical twin is less likely to get into a highly-skilled occupation with better pay than his/her brother or sister.

While the researchers in focus have found no evidence of lasting damage to thinking, memory, or mental health from teenage marijuana use.

But twins who smoked more pot did more poorly in school, which set them on a rockier life path moving forward, said lead researcher Jonathan Schaefer, a postdoctoral researcher with the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Development.

Those teens had a lower GPA, on average, less academic motivation, and more discipline problems, and were more likely to hang out with antisocial peers, researchers found.

“It could be the case that cannabis use causes temporary decreases in motivation, which leads your teen to get poorer grades, which eventually leads to lower educational attainment.”

Jonathan Schaefe

Schaefer and his colleagues analyzed data on 2,410 identical twins gathered from three different long-term studies at the Minnesota Center for Twin and Family Research for this study.