Review of Randomized Controlled Trials in Adolescent Cannabis Use Treatment: A Counseling Practitioner’s Summary

In the United States, adolescent cannabis use is a major public health problem that if left untreated can potentially have devastating consequences in an adolescent’s life. Evidence-based counseling treatments are established through the use of randomized controlled trials whereby adolescents with substance use issues are typically randomly assigned to one of two counseling treatments to identify which is most effective in reducing cannabis use at termination and at follow-up evaluations. Counseling practitioners are ethically bound to maintain their professional competence with adolescents with cannabis use issues by keeping current with the professional research literature on treatment interventions that have established efficacy and effectiveness for this counseling population. However, for the average practitioner, keeping current with the counseling intervention research literature can be a daunting and arduous task as many research studies and systematic reviews are written for the researcher rather than the practitioner and emphasize research design and statistical issues and deemphasize the clinical implications. The purpose of this study is to review and summarize for the practitioner 24 randomized controlled trials involving counseling treatments for adolescent cannabis use and identify which counseling treatments work for which adolescent populations for cannabis use.