Identifying Environmental and Biopsychosocial Risk and Protective Factors for Adolescent Cannabis Use in a Changing Global Context

Dear Colleagues,

Cannabis is the most commonly used psychoactive drug among adolescent and young adults worldwide. The regular use of cannabis during adolescence has been linked to multiple adverse psychosocial and health outcomes, including cognitive impairment, academic/vocational failure, poorer mental and physical health, and increased risk for later psychotic disorders. Patterns of youth cannabis use are changing amidst worldwide shifts in cannabis policy and environmental conditions, portending an emerging public health challenge globally. In light of these trends, scientific investigations into changing environmental contexts and shifting risk and protective (“resiliency”) factors for adolescent cannabis use are needed to inform the development of next-generation cannabis use prevention and early intervention efforts. 

This Special Issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH) focuses on environmental exposures and biopsychosocial risk and protective factors for adolescent cannabis use and cannabis-related disorders and on how these factors can be therapeutically targeted through prevention and early intervention strategies, public health initiatives, and healthcare and drug policy reform to improve outcomes for young people worldwide. This includes studies focused on characterizing malleable risk and protective factors for youth cannabis use at the individual, family, community, and population level, as well as studies investigating cannabis relationships with different mental health outcomes, including psychotic, mood, anxiety, and attentional disorders and self-harm behaviors during development. It also includes studies focused investigating positive and negative downstream effects of changing environmental conditions/contexts (e.g., the enactment of cannabis policy changes, parent/caregiver use, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol [Δ9-THC] or cannabidiol [CBD] concentrations) on youth health outcomes. This Special Issue also includes studies on developing and testing preventive interventions addressing these factors that include the evaluation of feasibility, acceptability, efficacy, effectiveness, and other aspects of intervention implementation. 

For this Special Issue, we invite scholars to submit papers related to cannabis use and its antecedents and correlates (e.g., family history of substance use, childhood adversity and trauma, social support, parenting, jurisdictional/state cannabis laws, neighborhood violence, social determinants of health, coping skills, social media) in developing populations. These submissions can include observational studies, ecological studies, policy studies, intervention trials, diagnostic/prognostic studies, and qualitative or mixed methods studies, as well as systematic, scoping, or narrative reviews focused on relevant subtopics within this theme. Studies using longitudinal data and applying cutting edge statistical methods such as machine learning or latent trajectory and other latent variable analyses are of particular interest. Studies focusing on specific groups including youth with mental health conditions, youth who engage in poly-drug use (i.e., who co-use of cannabis with alcohol or other drugs), minoritized racial/ethnic groups, and sexual and gender minorities are encouraged. Additionally, studies focusing on concurrent or prospective associations between youth cannabis use and mental health symptoms/disorders, and on elucidating individual, family, community, and population-level factors that explain variance in these associations are encouraged. Within this mental health sub-focus, studies investigating factors that influence the relationship between adolescent cannabis use and later psychotic disorders are of particular interest. International studies investigating environmental exposures and risk and protective factors for youth cannabis use in low- and middle-resource countries or across countries or jurisdictions with different environmental conditions (e.g., varying cannabis policies) are also encouraged. 

Dr. Christopher J. Hammond
Dr. Kathryn Van Eck
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• youth cannabis use
• cannabis use disorders
• risk factors
• protective factors
• resiliency
• environmental exposures
• drug policy
• poly-drug use
• co-occurring disorders and psychiatric comorbidity
• cannabis use prevention and early intervention approaches
• public health strategies
• population-level analyses and approaches