The effect of substance use on the delinquent behaviour of adolescents

Abstract

Adolescents who drink or smoke marijuana are more likely to engage in delinquent activities than their peers who do not use substances, but it is not clear whether this association is causal or driven by other difficult-to-measure underlying factors such as an individual's discount rate. Using several empirical strategies that are designed to control for the influence of unobservables, we explore the relationship between substance use and four outcomes: fighting, property-destruction, theft, and running away. Our results suggest that, for males, the positive association between substance-use and these outcomes is probably spurious. In contrast, there is some evidence that female substance use may be causally related to destroying property, theft, and running away. These results are of importance to parents and policymakers who wish to reduce the incidence of delinquent behaviour of adolescents.

Notes

¹ Fagan (1990) and Markowitz and Grossman (2000) summarize the reasons why substance use might be related to risky behaviours. A third explanation for the positive association is that that individuals use intoxicants as an excuse to engage in certain deviant behaviours, believing that that they will not be held to the usual social and legal standards of accountability.

² There is evidence that the instruments are correlated with the residuals in equation relating male alcohol use and theft. The 2SLS estimate of the effect of alcohol use on male theft should, therefore, be interpreted cautiously.