Cannabis is the most widely used illicit drug in the UK. Despite being an illicit substance, the use of cannabis is widespread across much of the UK, as well as many other countries across the world – especially Europe and North America.
Though it isn’t a highly addictive substance, like cocaine, because of the high rates of use there is still a substantial proportion of users of cannabis who experience dependency or addiction.
Cannabis addiction isn’t directly threatening to your health, because unlike a drug like heroin, you can’t overdose on cannabis.
However, the use of cannabis, which is increased with addiction or dependency, can be linked to a serious decline in mental and physical wellbeing. These consequences are especially severe for children and young adults who use the drug.
Therefore, it is important to prevent addiction to, or the excessive consumption of cannabis, especially among younger demographics.
In order to do this effectively, it’s useful to understand in greater depth the impact of cannabis on children and young adults, and most significantly, the common reasons why young adults use cannabis.
In the UK, the use of cannabis is highest among younger populations, including older children and young adults.
During adolescence and young adulthood, the brain is still in a key period of cognitive development. The use of cannabis can interfere with this development, causing a wide variety of knock-on effects.
Some of the impacts of cannabis use, which are exaggerated with younger age, include:
The use of cannabis, particularly among younger populations, is also strongly correlated with a decline in mental well-being.
This can impact young people and young adults especially hard, as they are often dealing with a large number of other complex emotional challenges.
Specifically, a decline in mental wellbeing is characterised by reports of lower mood and motivation which can begin to cause social and emotional isolation.
Without help, this decline in mental well-being can develop into something much more serious, including a diagnosable mental health condition like clinical depression or anxiety, as stated above.
Each young adult will have their own reasons for choosing to use cannabis. Sometimes its due to influence from peers, or figures in the media.
Sometimes, cannabis is used to self-medicate symptoms of depression or anxiety. Many young adults who use cannabis are even unaware of the negative consequences of the drug.
Whatever the reason, in order to prevent or stop the use of cannabis, it is essential to understand exactly why young adults use the drug.
First and foremost is peer pressure. Often, when a young person or young adult makes new friends or acquaintances and joins a new social group, they feel that they have something to prove. This leaves the door open to the influence of peer pressure.
If a young person or young adult is becoming close with a friend, or a group of friends, who use cannabis in a social context, they could begin to feel pressure to join in too with the recreational activity.
Because of the way in which the use of cannabis impacts and changes mood, a young person or young adult who is with a group of people using cannabis might feel left out if they aren’t also using the drug.
These feelings can make them even more vulnerable to peer pressure, which can kickstart the infrequent use of cannabis.
Peer pressure can take many forms, and can be subtle or more direct. Direct peer pressure will be the insistence that you join in with the activity, and use the cannabis too. In some instances, a person can be mocked if they decline the offer, and worries about this can fuel a young adult to use cannabis.
On the other hand, indirect peer pressure is more complex. You might not feel like you are being pressured to join in with the activity, and maybe you aren’t explicitly asked to join in with the activity.
However, being part of a group who are using cannabis can still be an indirect form of peer pressure as there can be an expectation that you will join in with the activity too.
While it might seem like the occasional use of cannabis in a social situation, caused by peer pressure, might not have the most serious consequences this isn’t the case.
The infrequent use of cannabis in social situations can quickly become habitual, especially if the young person is spending a lot of time with the same group.
Habitual use of cannabis can then develop into an addiction or dependency, and this can have a serious and detrimental impact on the well-being of the young person.
To avoid the impact of peer pressure, young adult who does not want to use cannabis should remove themselves from situations where it is present, and not join in with social activities where cannabis is being used.
A young adult who doesn’t want to use cannabis should also try to socialise with other more like-minded people who don’t use the drug in order to avoid peer pressure and enjoy other activities instead.
Another reason why young adults use cannabis is the misguided and misplaced belief that the consumption of cannabis is safe and has no short-term or long-term consequences.
It is true that, unlike other substances like heroin, cannabis doesn’t come with a direct and imminent risk to physical health. You can’t overdose on the drug, and even when used in high amounts, there is no risk of fatality from excessive consumption.
However, just because you can’t overdose on cannabis doesn’t mean that it doesn’t pose a risk to you. In fact, the drug is linked with many serious negative outcomes for physical and mental health.
The most direct among these is an increase in suicidal ideations, stemming from a correlation with the onset of serious mental health conditions.
Similarly, the psychoactive impact of cannabis on the brain and behaviour is often underestimated, because the effects are normally akin to alcohol.
Use of the drug, especially a strain which has high levels of THC, can induce feelings of anxiety, paranoia, and even hallucinations. These can cause a person to act erratically and unpredictably, and they can become a danger to themselves by risking accidents.
In the long term, the use of cannabis can develop into an addiction. This can come with many consequences of its own, including financial instability, social isolation, and unstable mood.
Therefore, despite many young adults using cannabis because they believe it has no consequences, the drug can have many indirect negative effects on a person’s life, even if it doesn’t come with a risk of overdose.
One of the compounds found is cannabis is the cannabinoid CBD. CBD has a wide variety of impacts on your physical and mental state when it’s ingested by using cannabis. One of the more commonly acknowledged impacts of CBD, is its ability to reduce symptoms of stress and anxiety.
For this reason, and with CBD being popularly known as a way to reduce anxiety, some people with mental health conditions like clinical depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or anxiety may choose to take cannabis as a form of self-medication.
This is done in the belief that the CBD in cannabis will help to reduce negative symptoms and make them easier to manage.
While research has shown that consistent use of the drug is actually highly linked with a decline in mental wellbeing and a worsening of mental health conditions in the long term.
Therefore, despite what might seem to be the benefits of self-medication with cannabis, the use of the drug to alleviate the symptoms of mental health conditions is not advised by the NHS.
The reason why so many young adults with mental health conditions turn to self-medication is due to the length of public health waiting lists.
For this reason, seeking private treatment for a mental health condition is an option to consider if you’re worried about the use of cannabis as a method of self-medication.
Many older adolescents and young adults find themselves in social situations where cannabis is available and easy to access.
Often, at parties, gigs, and other social occasions, young adults will be looking to get drunk, or alternatively, get high. If a young adult is looking to get high, then cannabis will often be the easiest way to achieve that.
The drug is readily available through local drug dealers, with estimations suggesting that up to £2.6 billion worth of the drug is sold across the UK in a single year.
The drug can also be cheaper to purchase than other illegal alternatives and its misplaced reputation for being harmless means that many people aren’t too concerned about using it.
Because it isn’t difficult to access, and because it is commonly present in social situations, the common availability of cannabis is one of the main reasons why young adults use cannabis.
Just as people tell stories about times when they were drunk, lots of older adolescents and young adults will recount their experiences of getting high from cannabis.
This means, that for a large portion of people who are interested in using the drug, the curiosity associated with trying it increases even more.
Curiosity then leads plenty of young adults to use of the drug in order to relate to others’ experiences, and in order to feel the impact of the drug themselves.
However, a lot of people who want to try cannabis out of curiosity either underestimate or aren’t aware of the potential for negative experiences.
The cannabinoid THC in cannabis can trigger bouts of paranoia and stress, which can lead to a deeply unsettling experience, rather than a fun one as people might assume.
Some studies report that cannabis is used by a percentage of young people and young adults as a means to reduce boredom.
This is supported by the fact that some people believe that the use of cannabis is a harmless activity.
However, while cannabis might offer some short-term distraction from boredom, it can be detrimental to motivation and interest in the long term, making the use of the drug counterproductive.
Young adults, whether they’re still a teen or later on in their life, may make the choice to use cannabis as a method of fitting in with their friends and wider social circle. This is sometimes related to, but not the same as, peer pressure.
Especially if young adult feels that they have something to prove to their social group, or wants to feel more included within a social group, they might
The young adult may not be being directly asked to use cannabis, but if they see their friends or other people their age using the drug, they might feel like they also need to use the drug in order to be perceived as ‘normal’.
Often, this reason for using cannabis will surface when young adults is spending the majority of their time with people their own age, for example, at university or college.
However young adults who use cannabis, or are considering using cannabis, should know that while the use of the drug is widespread the majority of people in all age groups do not use the drug.
Therefore, concerns about fitting in are more to do with a perception of widespread drug use, than the reality where the use of cannabis is likely to be less prevalent than it might first seem.
In order to prevent an older adolescent or young adult from using cannabis, the best course of action to take is a comprehensive and accurate education about cannabis.
This can dispel any myths, and dampen curiosity, as they learn about the negative impact of the drug and its long-term effects.
Education about the drug will allow someone to see a complete picture of cannabis, rather than just hearing about the so-called positives that come with cannabis use.
This can also prevent someone from getting into legal trouble further down the line, which is also a concern relating to the use of cannabis, whether it’s sustained or a one-off.
[1] Cannabis and depression
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33332004/
[2] Effects of cannabis on the adolescent brain
Boris is our editor-in-chief at Rehab 4 Addiction. Boris is an addiction expert with more than 20 years in the field. His expertise covers a broad of topics relating to addiction, rehab and recovery. Boris is an addiction therapist and assists in the alcohol detox and rehab process. Boris has been featured on a variety of websites, including the BBC, Verywell Mind and Healthline. You can connect with Boris online at LinkedIn or X.com.
