The goal of this review was to provide an overview of the genetic epidemiology of substance involvement during adolescence. We note here that there is a distinguished body of literature surrounding the behavior genetics methods described here – a review of this105 and extensive, historical reviews of some of the issues discussed here may be found elsewhere106,107. However, results reviewed here (and elsewhere), from a substantial number of adoption, twin and extended family studies, have demonstrated moderate to strong genetic components to the liability to develop substance use disorders. One apparent limitation of this review and of the existing literature is that there have been few genetically informative research studies of use or abuse/ dependence on substances other than tobacco, alcohol and cannabis. This most likely reflects the relatively low base rate of use or abuse/ dependence on “hard” drugs such as cocaine or heroin among adolescents and the resultant reduction in statistical power for studying these outcomes in family based studies. Nonetheless, the extent to which the findings discussed above generalize to the use of other substances is unknown.
