Parental monitoring can reduce teens' marijuana use

Washington, Nov 17 (ANI): A new American study suggests that parental monitoring can help bring down the cases of marijuana use by adolescents.

Psychologists Andrew Lac and William Crano of the Claremont Graduate University examined various studies to find the connection between parental monitoring (when parents know where their children are, what company are they in and what they are doing) and adolescent marijuana use.

Lac and Crano selected 17 studies containing data on over 35,000 participants. They assessed parental monitoring on the basis of admissions made by adolescent themselves and not their parents' reports of keeping an eye on their children.

The researchers found a strong link between parental monitoring and the decreased use of marijuana by adolescents.

The authors write: "Our review suggests that parents are far from irrelevant, even when it comes to an illegal and often secretive behavior on the part of their children."

They also believe that their analysis might come in handy for marijuana-prevention programs that are aimed at parents.

The findings of the review have been published in the latest issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. (ANI)