Use Of Other Illicit Drugs Research Articles

Job Mobility and Drug Use: An Event History Analysis

Life and drug histories collected in a longitudinal cohort of young adults age 24-25 are analyzed to specify the dynamic relationships between patterns of drug use and job separations. Three patterns of drug use are investigated: daily alcohol use, monthly use of marijuana, and monthly use of other illicit drugs. Job changes followed immediately by another job are distinghished from job losses not followed by new employment within a month. Two processes assumed to underlie the relationship between drug use and job mobility are distinguished: selection, in which individual predispositions account the self-selection into job separation, and causation, which reflects the specific effects of drug use on job separation. Drug use has a strong effect on job separation, which appears to be mainly a selection effect, however. The results document the importance of drug use in predicting high job mobility and subsequent unemployment in late adolescence and early adulthood. The neglect of this life-style factor in prior analyses has led to overestimations of the negative effects of job duration and marital status and the positive effect of prior experience of a job separation on future separations.

On Processes of Peer Influences in Adolescent Drug Use:

Data from longitudinal studies of adolescents carried out over the last ten years are reviewed to provide an integrated and dynamic perspective on the nature of friendships and processes of peer influence in adolescent drug involvement, within a general developmental perspective. Four interrelated questions are examined: What individual attributes are especially important in the formation of friendships among adolescents? Which of two processes, selection or socialization, account for the similarity in values and behaviors observed in ongoing friendship dyads, and how important is similarity in friendship formation and dissolution? What is the nature of friends' influence as compared to parents', and in which domains of adolescent's life do these influences exert themselves? What mechanisms, role modeling or social learning, underlie processes of interpersonal influences? Relational dyadic and triadic samples of adolescents matched to a parent and/or a best friend and observed at one point in time as well as over time provide important and relatively rare sources of data on processes of interpersonal influence. Sociodemographic characteristics are the strongest determinants of friendship formation, with participation in illicit drugs following next in importance. Both selection (assortative pairing) and socialization contribute to observed similarity in friendship pairs. Adolescents coordinate their choice of friends and their values and behaviors, in particular the use of marijuana, so as to maximize congruency in the friendship dyad. If there is a state of unbalance such that the friend's attitude or behavior is inconsistent with the adolescent's, the adolescent will either break off the friendship and seek another friend or will keep the friend and modify his or her own behavior. Both parents and peers can have strong influences on adolescents, depending upon the arena of influence. Parents are especially important for future life plans, while peers are most important for involvement in illicit drug use. However, for drug use itself, there are different patterns of influence depending upon the stage of drug involvement. Peers are especially important for initiation into marijuana use, while parental factors gain in importance in the transition from marijuana use to the use of other illicit drugs. Interpersonal influences of peers on ongoing marijuana and alcohol use result from modeling and imitation more than from social reinforcement and the transmission of values.

Patterns of drug use from adolescence to young adulthood: III. Predictors of progression.

Possible linkages of influence among classes of drugs in the observed sequential progression from adolescence to young adulthood are investigated through event history analyses. Three stages are examined: initiation to marijuana, to the use of other illicit drugs, and to prescribed psychoactive drugs. The data are based on a follow-up cohort of former adolescents representative of high school students in grade 10 and 11 in New York State who were reinterviewed nine years later at ages 24-25. The sequential order between alcohol and/or cigarettes and marijuana reflects not only the effect of the use of legal drugs on marijuana initiation, but also age effects on onset of these drugs, controlling for individual characteristics measured in adolescence; marijuana use by one's friends in adolescence is an additional important predictor of marijuana initiation. Prior use of marijuana is necessary for progression to other illicit drugs. Multiple factors are involved in the progression to prescribed drugs, with adolescent depressive symptomatology and use of other illicit drugs important for both sexes, and maternal use of psychoactive drugs, dropping out of school, and prior use of marijuana of additional importance for women. Although licit drugs influence initiation into marijuana independently of age effects, it is especially for the progression from marijuana to other illicit drugs that the earlier drug is associated with the progression to a higher stage drug.

Patterns of drug use from adolescence to young adulthood: II. Sequences of progression.

Major pathways of progression among legal, illegal, and medically prescribed psychoactive drugs from adolescence to young adulthood are described. The data are based on a follow-up cohort of former adolescents representative of high school students in grades 10 and 11 in New York State who were reinterviewed nine years later at ages 24-25. Various models of progression are tested for their goodness of fit. The patterns formerly observed in adolescence involving progression from one class of legal drug (either alcohol or cigarettes) to marijuana to the use of other illicit drugs appear in the transitional period into young adult, with an additional stage, that of prescribed psychoactive drugs. Some differences appear between men and women, with cigarettes more important for women than for men in the total progression.

Marijuana users in young adulthood.

Striking differences appeared among 1,325 young adults aged 24 to 25 years depending on their marijuana use. Differences increased with involvement, although no threshold appeared at any particular level. Marijuana users were characterized by higher use of other substances, membership in networks of marijuana users, lower participation and greater instability in conventional roles of adulthood, history of psychiatric hospitalization and lower psychological well-being, and participation in deviant activities. Involvement with marijuana-using friends and use by spouse or partner, as well as use of other illicit drugs, were important predictors of current marijuana involvement. In young adulthood, as in adolescence, marijuana use is embedded in a social context favorable to its use and is associated with disaffection from social institutions. The social and psychological correlates of marijuana use are similar in young adulthood and adolescence and have remained unchanged over the last decade.

Illicit drug use, peer attitudes, and perceptions of harmful effects among convicted cannabis offenders.

A sample of criminalized cannabis users provided information about their use of other illicit drugs and friends' attitudes toward various substances. The majority of those surveyed were regular, heavy users of cannabis, had friends who were similarly involved, and were more experienced with a variety of other illicit drugs than youthful groups from the larger population. In its perception of harmful effects of various substances, the offender sample held fairly conventional, high-risk views on opiates and amphetamines. Opinion was more divided over the psychedelics and cocaine. Cannabis was considered least harmful of all the other illicit drugs and alcohol. Those convicted of the offense of cannabis possession displayed the knowledgeable insider's perspective of a hierarchy of dangerousness for drugs that is at variance with their largely undifferentiated legal status.

A Case Against Decriminalization of Pot

Drug use may be either prescribed or proscribed depending on the drug and/or the nature of procurement. Marijuana and other drugs of those not in power are proscribed. Although males smoke and sell marijuana somewhat more than females there was no strong association between any of the background variables and drug use variables, supporting the position that drug use has become a positive value within the student culture. The data showed that involvement in the selling of marijuana and other drugs is related to the illegal aspects of procurement and distribution of marijuana, a network which can only be broken by legalization. An investigation of patterns of drug use among undergraduates at a New England university shows that marijuana use has become a normal part of student life even among men and women, athletes, and good students. Furthermore, frequent use of marijuana is strongly associated with selling of marijuana, use of other illicit drugs and selling of those drugs, consistent with the hypothesis that the need to go through illegal channels to obtain marijuana leads to a progressive involvement with the drug subculture.