'Binge drinking, pot can make you a loser'

Is your teenaged child addicted to alcohol and marijuana? Beware, for not only does it affect health, but also makes one unsuccessful in life, a study warns.

Teenagers downing over 10 beers in one night and high on pot were less likely to go to college, get full-time work or even get married, it said.

The findings showed that dependence on alcohol and marijuana might affect young boys more severely as they were more likely to achieve less across all four measures on achievement of life goals -- education, employment, marriage and social economic potential.

"This study found that chronic marijuana use in adolescence was negatively associated with achieving important developmental milestones in young adulthood," said lead author Elizabeth Harari, psychiatrist from the University of Connecticut.

Given the current move in the US toward marijuana legalisation for medicinal and possibly recreational use, awareness of marijuana's potentially deleterious effects will be important moving forward, Harari added.

The results were presented at the American Public Health Association 2017 Annual Meeting and Expo in Atlanta.

For the study, the team included 1,165 young adults from across the US whose habits were first assessed at age 12 and then at two-year intervals until they were between 25 and 34 years old.

Previous research had shown that heavy use of alcohol or marijuana in adolescence affects people developmentally.

This study followed up on that, to look at what happens after age 18, the researchers said.

--IANS

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