Most studies of associations between parent-child communication and substance use have focused on either cigarette smoking or alcohol drinking as adolescent substance use outcomes (e.g., Beatty, Cross, & Shaw, 2008), and few have considered marijuana use. When marijuana was included, it was often as part of an index of substance use, rather than as a separate outcome (e.g., Ackard et al., 2006). However, in one study parental influences on adolescent marijuana use were reported to be stronger than parental influences for alcohol use and similar to those for cigarette use (Choquet et al., 2008). Thus, it is of interest to include marijuana use as an outcome variable and to examine these outcome variables separately.
