The Future of Substance Abuse Now: Relationships among Adolescent Use of Vaping Devices, Marijuana, and Synthetic Cannabinoids

Abstract

Background: Substances that can be vaped include nicotine, marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and a range of synthetic drugs called new psychoactive substances (NPS). Due to the rising popularity of vaping among adolescents, it is crucial to understand the relationships between vaping and illicit drug use. Objectives: This paper examined the prevalence and trends of using vaping devices, marijuana vaping, marijuana products, synthetic cannabinoids and mist contents among youth. Methods: The study utilized 5 sets of public cross-sectional national data from the “Monitoring the Future” surveys during 2014–2018. It employed logistic regression to analyze the data. Results: There was an increase from 10.5% in 2017 to 20.8% in 2018 for the past 30-day use of vaping devices among 12^th graders. Furthermore, there was an increase from 21.6% in 2017 to 34.5% in 2018 for the past 12-month use of marijuana via vaping device among 12^th-grade marijuana users. Additionally, there were significant associations between vaping device use and marijuana vaping, between vaping device use and marijuana use, between vaping device use and synthetic cannabinoids use, and between marijuana use and synthetic cannabinoids use from 2016 to 2018. Conclusions: Vaping emerged as another major route of marijuana administration among youth. Adolescent marijuana users had higher odds of using synthetic cannabinoids. This finding highlighted the importance of understanding what adolescent substance consumption pattern would be where marijuana was legalized. It also supported the hypothesis that vaping devices use correlates with, or is associated with, marijuana and synthetic cannabinoids use.

Keywords:

• Vaping
• e-cigarette
• nicotine
• marijuana
• synthetic cannabinoids
• new psychoactive substances
• NPS
• youth
• EVALI
• COVID-19

Declaration of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the article.

Notes

1 Adjusted by gender and race.