To comprehensively study the impacts of substance use and other experiences on adolescent brain development and health will require following a large cohort of children from early adolescence through the period of greatest risk for substance use, using neuroimaging and other sophisticated tools. Now is an opportune moment to embark on such a study, for three reasons. First, the rapidly shifting landscape of substance use in the United States has raised an unprecedented number of questions in many people’s minds, particularly about the effects of marijuana, tobacco, and extreme binge drinking on young people. Second, the technical capacity to address the complex interactions of various environmental exposures and development (e.g., through non-invasive brain imaging, genetic analyses, and deep phenotypic characterization of individuals) now exists and can be deployed reliably and consistently at multiple sites across the country. And third, the ability to marshal common interest and funding across NIH institutes, necessary to support and guide a study of the needed scope, now exists, in part because of the Collaborative Research on Addiction at NIH (CRAN), a partnership formed in 2014 to leverage resources and expertise to promote research and training on polysubstance use and use disorders.
