Limitations and future directions
The current study has some important limitations. First, the sample was majority female, white, living in Newfoundland and Labrador, and currently enrolled as students, which limits the generalizability of our results to all emerging adults. Additionally, the study may have been biased towards cannabis consumers, given that our prevalence of cannabis consumption seems to be higher than the prevalence rates previously reported in Canadian emerging adults [While we found several statistically significant results, many of the effect sizes were relatively small, and the threshold for meaningful change resulting from risk perception is currently unknown. Consequently, while it appears that emerging adults were aware of many of the risks associated with cannabis consumption, these results may not represent substantial behaviour change. Future research should consider evaluating at which point changes in perceptions of risk may begin to influence cannabis consumption behaviour.