Five-year prospective prediction of marijuana use cessation of youth at continuation high schools.

This paper reports the prediction of marijuana use cessation among young adults who were regular users 5 years earlier. Social, attitude, intrapersonal, violence-related, drug use, and demographic baseline measures served as predictors of whether or not 339 teenage marijuana users reported having quit use 5 years later. Young adult social role variables were included as additional predictors. Quitting was defined as having not used marijuana in the last 30 days (42% of the sample at follow-up). After controlling for covariation among predictors, in a three-step analysis, only baseline level of marijuana use, male gender, young adult marital status, and friends' marijuana use (marginal) remained statistically direct predictors. Implications of these results include the need to reduce psychological dependence on marijuana and increase social unacceptability of marijuana use across genders to help increase prevalence of quit attempts.