Substance Use Progression from Adolescence to Early Adulthood: Effortful Control in the Context of Friendship Influence and Early-Onset Use

In a sample of 998 ethnically diverse adolescents, a multiagent, multimethod approach to the measurement of adolescent effortful
control, adolescent substance use, and friendship influence was used to predict escalations to early-adult tobacco, alcohol,
and marijuana use by ages 22–23. Structural equation modeling revealed that adolescent substance use and friends’ substance
use tended to be highly correlated and together were robust predictors of a problematic pattern of usage for all substances
in early adulthood. In addition, the adolescent effortful control construct directly predicted progressions to problematic
use of tobacco and marijuana, but not for alcohol. In the alcohol model, effortful control interacted with the construct of
substance use lifestyle (based on adolescent alcohol use and friends’ substance use) when predicting problematic alcohol use
in early adulthood. Results held when comparing across genders and across ethnic groups. These findings emphasize the importance
of addressing adolescent self-regulation in interventions designed to treat and prevent early-adult substance abuse.