COMMENTARY
Commentary on Pedersen and Skardhamar (2010): Does cannabis use predict
non-drug offending? add_2850 119..120
The paper by Pedersen & Skardhamar [1] is an excellent
contribution to knowledge. They use data from the Young
in Norway Longitudinal Study, which is an extremely
important four-wave population survey. They show that
cannabis use at ages 15 and 20 years predicts subsequent
offending, but that the predictability is greater for drug
crimes than for non-drug crimes. They also show that
the predictability for non-drug crimes becomes non-
significant after controlling for prior risk factors, alcohol
intoxication and use of other illegal drugs. The analyses
are neat and clear. While generally welcoming this excel-
lent paper I wish to raise some issues, and I will divide
these into ‘methodological’ and ‘substantive’.
METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES
The most important methodological issue is attrition.
According to Pedersen et al. [2], a nationally represen-
tative sample of seventh and eighth grade students was
surveyed, using a self-administered questionnaire, in
1992–93. Of the original sample, 1.5% were excluded
[at Time 1 (T1)] because of poor reading skills and 3.0%
of the remainder were lost because of lack of student or
parent consent or prolonged hospitalization. Of those
who completed the T1 questionnaire, 91.6% completed
the T2 questionnaire. According to Pedersen [3], of
those who completed the T2 questionnaire, 90.4% con-
sented to be followed-up further. Of those consenters,
84% provided data at T3 and 82% at T4 [1,3].
According to my estimate, about 65% of the original
sample (98.5% ¥ 97.0% ¥ 91.6% ¥ 90.4% ¥ 82%) pro-
vided data at T4. Similarly, we are told that the cumu-
lative response rate over all data collections was 69%,
but this could possibly correspond to about 55% of the
original sample.
This is a good response rate for a mail follow-up study,
but of course the problem is that those who are lost tend
to be the high-risk students: male, with poor school
grades, urban residence, and so on [1,3]. Commendably,
Pedersen & Skarohamar estimate that the serious offend-
ing rate in their sample is about one-third less than in the
population (7.8% compared to 11.6%, presumably up to
age 27 years). However, the high and biased attrition rate
may threaten the validity of the conclusions.
In the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development
(CSDD), 411 London males have been followed-up from
age 8 to age 48, using repeated personal interviews [4].
The attrition rate in this study was very low; the percent-
© 2010 The Author. Journal compilation © 2010 Society for the Study of Addiction
age of those still alive who were interviewed was 95% at
age 18, 94% at age 32 and 93% at age 48. Importantly,
the males who were the most difficult to interview were
significantly more likely to be convicted [5], showing that
conclusions about predictors of offending in studies with
high attrition rates might be misleading.
The second important methodological issue, which is
related to some extent to the first, is that the number of
offenders is low: only 5.1% at ages 15–20 and 3.5% at
ages 20–27. This may make it difficult to obtain statisti-
cally significant results even if effect sizes are substantial.
Although the male : female ratio for offending is high
(5.3 : 1 at ages 20–27), males and females are combined
in all the analyses, presumably because of the problem of
small numbers. It is not clear to me why gender (and age)
were not controlled in the Table 3 logistic regression
analyses.
SUBSTANTIVE ISSUES
The main conclusion of the paper is that cannabis use does
not predict non-drug offending significantly after control-
ling for confounding factors. I am somewhat dubious
about controlling for other drug use in model 3, because it
could be argued that cannabis use and other drug use are
both indicators of the same underlying construct. In the
CSDD, there was a considerable overlap between cannabis
and other drug users; the percentage of other drug users
who were also cannabis users was 83% at age 18, 91% at
age 32 and 64% at age 48. I will focus upon model 2. Here
we see non-significant odds ratios (ORs) of the order of 2.0
for the relationship between cannabis use and non-drug
offending. According to the Presidential Address by Cohen
[6, p. 136], ‘the field of epidemiology tends to regard OR of
2.0 or more as fairly large’.
A fairly strong relationship that is non-significant
seems somewhat inconclusive to me, and not a very firm
basis for the main conclusion of the paper that ‘the use of
cannabis does not seem to represent a risk factor for a
general criminal involvement’. The systematic review by
Bennett et al. [7] was inconclusive in the opposite direc-
tion: the weighted mean OR for cannabis was a rather
weak 1.5, but it was statistically significant (because it
was based upon an accumulation of results obtained in
10 different studies). The main conclusion from the sys-
tematic review is that heroin, cocaine and crack were
more strongly related to criminal behaviour than was
cannabis.
Addiction, 105, 119–120

120 Commentary
In the CSDD, cannabis use at age 18 significantly pre-
dicted non-drug convictions between ages 19 and 32
[39% of users were convicted, compared with 24% of
non-users; OR = 2.0, confidence interval (CI) 1.3–3.3].
However, after controlling for prior convictions between
ages 10 and 18 in a logistic regression, the prediction
became non-significant (partial OR = 1.4), in agreement
with the conclusions of Pedersen & Skarohamar [1].
Cannabis use at age 32 predicted non-drug convictions
more strongly between ages 33 and 50 (31% of users
were convicted, compared with 9% of non-users;
OR = 4.5, CI 2.3–8.8). Furthermore, the significant pre-
dictability of cannabis use at age 32 held up after con-
trolling for prior convictions at ages 10–18 and 19–32,
heavy smoking, heavy drinking and binge drinking up
to age 32, and age 8–10 risk factors that were the best
predictors of non-drug convictions at ages 33–50. It
may be that cannabis use predicts non-drug convictions
more strongly at older ages than at younger ages, in
agreement with findings in the systematic review by
Bennett et al. [7].
Another issue that might be raised centres upon the
validity of the self-report information. The fact that can-
nabis use predicts later drug charges might be cited as
evidence of the predictive validity of the self-reports. A
final problem is that both cannabis use and non-drug
offending vary continuously as people grow older. In the
absence of frequent repeated survey information, it is dif-
ficult to investigate whether cannabis use has any causal
effect on non-drug crime. Ideally, it would be desirable to
investigate whether changes in cannabis use within indi-
viduals were followed reliably by changes in non-drug
offending within individuals, after controlling for con-
founding factors.
To conclude, the paper by Pedersen & Skardhamar [1]
reports interesting and thought-provoking results from a
very important prospective longitudinal survey of drug
© 2010 The Author. Journal compilation © 2010 Society for the Study of Addiction
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use and offending. Many more surveys of this kind are
needed, with large samples, low attrition and frequent
data collection.
Declaration of interests
None.
Keywords Cannabis, longitudinal survey, offending.
DAVID P. FARRINGTON
Institute of Criminology, Cambridge University,
Cambridge, UK. E-mail: dpf1@cam.ac.uk
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