Substance-Specific Risk Factors among Young Adults: Potential Prevention Targets across Cannabis-Permissive Environments

Abstract

Purpose

This study examined levels of substance-specific risk factors such as perception of harm from substance use among young adults in a range of cannabis-permissive environments. The main objective was to inform future preventive interventions aimed at reducing cannabis use in the context of increasingly permissive environments.

Methods

Data came from the Community Youth Development Study (CYDS) collected in 2016 when participants were about 23 years old (n = 1,722 participants residing in 46 U.S. states). Young adults self-reported their perceptions about the harms related to cannabis, alcohol, and cigarette use; attitudes about and ease of access to cannabis and other substances; and perceived wrongfulness and social acceptability of cannabis, alcohol, and cigarette use and of selling of cannabis and other illegal drugs.

Results

Young adults in more permissive cannabis contexts reported higher levels of all cannabis-specific risk factors (e.g., greater access to and more favorable attitudes about cannabis use), except for perception of harm from regular cannabis use. However, permissiveness of the cannabis environment was not associated with heightened levels of risk factors for other substance use (such as alcohol, cigarettes, and opioids).

Conclusions

Future preventive interventions for young adults living in more permissive cannabis contexts may need to focus on cannabis-specific risk factors in particular and go beyond considerations of harm from regular use. Future studies should replicate these findings with other samples.

Keywords:

• Cannabis
• substance use
• risk factors

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge CYDS panel participants for their contribution to this study, the Social Development Research Group (SDRG) Survey Research Division for their hard work collecting data, Ms. Elena Riederer for her assistance with preparation of the early draft of this manuscript, and Ms. Tanya Williams and Ms. Diane Christiansen for their editorial and administrative support.

An earlier version of this article was presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Prevention Research held May 28–31, 2019, in San Francisco, CA.

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.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health under grant numbers R01DA015183, R56DA044522, and R01DA044522, with co-funding from the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute of Mental Health, the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. These organizations had no further role in study design; in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; or in the decision to submit the article for publication. ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT01088542.