Social environment has been shown to have a great influence on the behaviour of adolescents and young adults. In a recent study, researchers found that substance use in adolescence can be impacted by parent-child relationships and peer associations. They found that higher quality parent-adolescent relationships in early adolescence was associated with reduced cannabis use in later adolescence, while associations with deviant peers was associated with increases in cannabis and tobacco use and binge drinking. Peer associations had a larger influence on the baseline trajectory and influenced the timing of peak use.
