Evidence that early (among girls) and late maturation (among boys) is associated with increased use and abuse of substances in adolescence and early adulthood lends support for the off-time or deviance hypothesis. The deviance hypothesis predicts that adolescents whose maturational timing is most at odds with the normal timing of socially accepted life sequences are more at risk of emotional and behavioural problems (Ge, Conger & Elder, 1996; Petersen & Taylor, 1980). Adolescents who mature on-time in relation to the peer group are therefore not hypothesised to be at risk. Recent work that used the Add Health data, however, showed that males and female’s early pubertal timing was associated with higher alcohol user and heavy drinking trajectories with effects persisting into early adulthood (Biehl, Natsuaki & Ge, 2007). The differences across studies indicating that early maturing males and females and/or late maturing males are most at risk has been linked to variation in the measurement of alcohol use across studies and to the age of the sample studied (Biehl et al., 2007). However, the relative consistent support for the early
