Concern over the potential health risks associated with continue, long-term pot use is nothing new, but a new study says that teenagers who begin smoking marijuana during late adolescence are not actually at a higher risk for lung cancer, depression, or other physical and mental health issues than those who remain smoke-free.

“What we found was a little surprising,” admits lead researcher Jordan Bechtold. The University of Pittsburgh medical center psychology research fellow goes on to say, in a news release from the American Psychological Association, “There were no differences in any of the mental or physical health outcomes that we measured regardless of the amount or frequency of marijuana used during adolescence.”

This study examined more than 400 males in the Pittsburgh area from the ages of 14 to 36. 54 percent of the test sample was black, 42 percent was white, and 4 percent was from another ethnic or racial group.

These 400+ subjects were next divided into four subgroups based on their marijuana use. The first group consisted of 46 percent of this population: the non-or-low-users. The second group smoked regularly (22 percent); the third group smoked marijuana only during their teen years (11 percent); and the fourth group consisted of those who started smoking during their teenage years and continued using the drug throughout the rest of their lives (21 percent).

The study showed that early and regular users did, indeed, have much higher overall marijuana use, pointing out that those who did rapidly increased their use during their teenage years and peaked about 200 days per year, on average by the age of 22. But after this, the study shows that marijuana use fell a little.

“We wanted to help inform the debate about legalization of marijuana, but it’s a very complicated issue and one study should not be taken in isolation,” Bechtold informs.