Substance Use & Misuse最新文献

Background: Few studies to date have examined the number of comorbid substances used alongside Prescription Opioid Misuse (POM) to predict suicidal behaviors among US young adults.

Objective: This study investigated the relationship between comorbid substance use with POM and suicidal behaviors among the US young adults.

Methods: Data were from individuals aged 18-25 (N = 69,204, 51.8% female) in the 2015-2019 National Surveys on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH). The final analytic sample for logistic regression was 36,892 young adults.

Results: After controlling for key covariates, the combination of POM and three or more illicit drugs were at the greatest odds of suicidal ideation (OR = 2.57, 95% CI = 1.61 - 4.11, p < 0.001) and attempts (OR = 3.57, 95% CI = 1.89 - 6.76, p < 0.001) compared to those without POM or drug use.

Conclusions: The study provides evidence of a dose-response relationship between the number of illicit drugs uses alongside POM and the suicide risk as a clinically important phenomenon with implication for intervention. Findings highlight that POM, with or without illicit drug use, can serve as a behavioral and clinical indicator for identifying young adults at heightened risk of suicidality. This group warrants prioritized intervention targets to ensure timely access to developmentally appropriate clinical treatment, aiming to mitigate addiction progression and prevent harm and mortality.

Introduction: Blunt and hemp wraps, as a means of consuming cannabis, have emerged into the retail space where the prevalence has been increasing since 2017. There is limited epidemiological research on the prevalence of use of these products across the U.S. particularly among young adults who are at greater risk of tobacco and cannabis use.

Methods: This study draws from a U.S. national representative sample of young adults (n = 1178) captured in May 2022. Respondents participated in an online survey about their use of blunt and hemp wraps. Multinomial regression was used to examine differences in sociodemographic characteristics (gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, educational attainment, and region) in relation to use of each wrap type.

Results: One quarter (22.7%) of young adults reported ever having used a blunt wrap, 3.2% in the past 30-days. One in seven (14.3%) had ever used a hemp wrap, 2.3% in the past 30-days. Non-Hispanic Black young adults were 1.55 and 2.91 times as likely to have ever used blunt or hemp wraps, respectively, compared to non-Hispanic Whites. Similarly, participants who identified as gay or lesbian or bisexual similarly had greater odds of having ever used blunt or hemp wraps. Hispanic young adults were 2.49 times as likely to have used hempwraps compared to non-Hispanic Whites.

Conclusion: Blunt and hemp wrap use is prevalent among young adults, particularly among minoritized populations. Continued research and surveillance of use of these products is needed to fully evaluate the impact their use may have on the broader population.

Substance use and mental health are highly correlated, though few studies assess the risk for depression and anxiety associated with dual and polysubstance use among college students. The purpose of this study was to characterize the relationship between alcohol, cannabis, and e-cigarette exclusive, dual, and polysubstance use and depression and anxiety among U.S. college students by racial and ethnic subgroup and stratified by sex.

Data from 83,467 undergraduate students participating in the 2020-2021 Health Minds Survey, a multi-campus, web-based survey, were used. Sex-stratified logistic regression models examined the effects of exclusive (past 30-day cannabis use, past 30-day e-cigarette use, past 2-week heavy alcohol use), dual (two among cannabis, e-cigarette, or alcohol use), and polysubstance (all three substances) use on anxiety (≥10 GAD-7 score) and depression (≥15 PHQ-9 score).

The study included 60,746 females and 22,721 males. Among females, compared to those who exclusively used alcohol, dual users of cannabis and e-cigarette had the largest odds for depression (adjusted odds ratio (aOR) = 1.92) and anxiety (aOR = 1.69) followed by polysubstance users (aORs = 1.85 and 1.53, respectively). Among males, compared to those who exclusively used alcohol, dual users of cannabis and e-cigarette had the largest odds for depression (aOR = 2.72) and anxiety (aOR = 2.23) followed by polysubstance users (aOR = 1.71 and 1.85, respectively). African American female and male students had lower odds of anxiety and depression compared to White students.

The results suggest that single, dual, and polysubstance use are associated with anxiety and depression among U.S. college students, though not necessarily in additive ways.

Background: African American/Black (hereafter referred to as Black) persons who smoke constitute a tobacco disparities group in the United States. Within the Black population, female smokers experience a disproportionate percentage of these disparities and are less likely to quit cigarettes than their male counterparts. Two factors implicated in female smokers' relatively worse quit success are (1) motives to smoke to reduce negative affect and (2) expectancies that smoking will reduce negative affect.

Objectives: The present study sought to test sex differences in these two clinically relevant cognitive constructs and evaluate the indirect effects of sex and severity of problems when trying to quit via smoking motives and expectancies for negative affect reduction among Black adults who smoke. Participants included 103 Black adults who smoke daily (72% male; M_age = 44.5 years, SD = 11.5 years).

Results: Results revealed sex differences in both negative affect reduction motives and expectancies, as well as a partial indirect effect for sex on the severity of problems when trying to quit through negative affect reduction motives (a₁b₁ = 0.18, 95% CI [0.04, 0.38]) but not negative affect reduction expectancies (a₂b₂ = -0.01, 95% CI [-0.11, 0.09]) in a simultaneous model of indirect effects.

Conclusions: These findings shed light on the complex relationship between race, sex, and severity of problems when trying to quit, particularly when complicated by smoking motives and expectancies. Current data should be considered when developing sex-specific, tailored smoking cessation interventions for Black women.

Objective: The use of crowdsourcing for addiction research has increased exponentially in recent years, but the extent to which the populations we expect results to generalize to might be engaging in substance use while participating in remote research has not been formally quantified. Understanding rates of day-of-study substance use on crowdsourcing platforms may be especially relevant given immediately recent use can alter cognitive and behavioral decision-making processes (e.g., attention, behavioral economic drug purchase tasks) that are often the focus of online substance use research.

Method: The purpose of this study is to (1) characterize rates of substance use (i.e., alcohol, cannabis, or both) among 790 Prolific workers on the day of the study, within the past three hours, and since starting the study; (2) provide sample demographic descriptive statistics, typical substance use patterns, and their associations with day-of use; and (3) evaluate whether day-of use is associated with time taken to complete the study and performance on attention checks.

Results: Day-of use was greater than 10%, primarily consisted of cannabis use, and several general use patterns were associated with day-of use (e.g., past year binge drinking was associated with day-of cannabis use). Day-of use was not associated with longer study completion times; attention check analyses were inconclusive.

Conclusion: Considering these results, we provide suggestions for best practices when crowdsourcing data for addiction research and advocate for future studies that use naturalistic experiments to complement laboratory drug- and alcohol-administration studies.

Background: Nicotine gum products from brands like Lucy and Rogue are relatively new arrivals to the tobacco marketplace. While studies of correlates of nicotine gum use are in their nascent stage, data from social media can be used to stay abreast of user experiences with novel tobacco products. This study leveraged machine learning to identify topics of Twitter posts about nicotine gum from the year 2022.

Methods: Twitter data was collected using the Twitter Application Programming Interface (API), with search terms "nicotine" AND "gum" OR "nic" AND "gum". 16,940 tweets from 10,353 unique users were included in the analysis. Topic modeling with Top2Vec was used to identify topics and a string search of popular brands and flavors was also conducted.

Results: Eight distinct topics were identified. Smoking and vaping cessation was the most common topic, followed by promotion, pricing, and marketing; appeal; product comparisons; perceived benefits; distrust in institutions; health concerns; and COVID-19 misinformation. The most mentioned brand was Nicorette. A tenth of the tweets contained a reference to a flavor.

Conclusion: The goal of identifying topics in nicotine gum-related conversations is to better understand the public's perceptions and experiences with nicotine gum. These findings may be used to inform survey-based research, policy targets, and health communication campaigns.

Objectives: This study investigates the prevalence of exposure to pro- and anti-tobacco advertisements across different sociodemographic groups and sources of exposure in the United States.

Methods: The study included 6252 participants from the Health Information National Trends Survey. Binary logistic regression was used to examine associations between exposure to pro and anti-tobacco advertisements, the sources of exposure, and demographic factors.

Results: 10% of our sample were current smokers. A rate of 48.14% reported exposure to pro-tobacco ads, and 61.28% reported exposure to anti-tobacco ads. Findings reveal notable disparities in exposure to both pro and anti-tobacco advertisements. Exposure to pro-tobacco ads was more common among current smokers (OR = 0.53 (95% CI 0.44-0.64), p < 0.001), male participants (female: OR = 0.85 (95% CI 0.77-0.95), p = 0.003), and younger adults. Reported exposure to anti-tobacco ads was more common among younger adults, individuals with lower levels of education and income, and current smokers. Radio, TV, and billboards were among the most common sources of ad exposure for both types. Stores were among the most common sources of exposure to pro-tobacco ads (stores: 35.58% (18-34), 39.58% (35-49), and online sources (21.71%) were among the sources where people encountered anti-tobacco messages most frequently.

Conclusions: The findings underscore the importance of understanding the changing media consumption patterns and advertising awareness across various demographic groups. They also highlight the urgent need for targeted tobacco prevention interventions, especially via Radio, TV, billboards, and stores, particularly among younger adults, racial minorities, and current smokers who show higher exposure to pro-tobacco ads.

Background: Place of last drink (POLD) is a law enforcement strategy designed to decrease the service of alcohol to intoxicated patrons (i.e., overservice). When officers respond to an alcohol-related incident, they inquire about and record the place where the involved individuals last drank alcohol; this information can help identify licensed alcohol establishments that show a pattern of overserving alcohol. We evaluated the effects of a POLD initiative on various types of crime.

Methods: The POLD initiative was conducted in the state of Minnesota (USA). We compared 26 intervention jurisdictions to 26 matched comparisons. Outcomes were six crime measures (e.g., driving under the influence, violent, nonviolent). Predictors were levels of participation and implementation of POLD. We fit a separate Poisson regression model for each crime outcome and each predictor.

Results: In all models, we found little difference in crime rates between intervention and comparison jurisdictions. No effect on crime was observed for either participation or implementation levels of POLD. However, we found implementation levels were relatively low across jurisdictions.

Conclusion: This study adds to a very limited literature addressing the effects of POLD on public health harms such as crime. The particular POLD initiative did not appear to affect crime rates. We found POLD implementation levels showed considerable room for improvement and could help to explain some of the lack of effects of POLD on crime. More research is needed in additional localities and to assess whether specific aspects of implementation could help to strengthen POLD efforts.

Introduction: Flavorings are one of the major appealing factors of current tobacco products, especially for young adults. They constantly evolve, and new flavorings are introduced to the market every year, but little is known about user profiles of flavored tobacco products (FTPs). Methods: We analyzed young adult (ages 18-24) tobacco product users (N = 4,707) from Wave 5 of the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health Study. We applied bivariate analyses to compare individuals who use FTP and non-FTPs by different flavor types (i.e., menthol/mint, fruit, candy/sweets, and tobacco). Parameter estimates were weighted by applying the sample and replicate weights for the complex study design to produce population-representative estimates. Results: Sixty percent of the current combustible tobacco users and 90% of electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) users were FTP users. FTP users were more likely to be multiple product users than non-FTP users. Being non-Hispanic White, drinking alcohol in the past year, experiencing internalizing problems in the past month, and having tobacco dependence were associated with FTP use. Flavored ENDS users had different sociodemographic characteristics by flavor types but did not differ significantly in vaping-related behaviors (e.g., frequency). Also, preferred flavors differed among tobacco user groups (i.e., ENDS, hookah, and cigars). Conclusions: FTPs appear to be gaining popularity among young adults and tend to show co-use with multiple tobacco products and other substances. Future studies are warranted to monitor the risk factors of young adult FTP use, especially in the context of flavor ban on ENDS products.

Background and objectives: We examined associations between sources of social influence (i.e. close friends, other underage people present) within specific settings with the number of drinks underage youth consumed.

Methods: Data were collected through a cross-sectional survey with 422 underage youth in California (14 to 19 years old) who reported past-6-month alcohol use. Participants were asked to think about the last time they drank alcohol in the past 6 months at: restaurants, bars/nightclubs, own home, another's home, outdoors, and fraternities/sororities. Outcomes were the number of whole drinks participants drank the last time in each setting. Independent measures were social characteristics of these drinking events including number of people <21 years old present, number of close friends present, number of <21 years old who consumed alcohol, and number of close friends who consumed alcohol. We also assessed socio-demographics and accounted for the overall exposure to each setting in the past 6 months.

Results: Using negative binomial regression models, the number of close friends was positively associated with number of drinks consumed at restaurants, another's home, and outdoors. The number of close friends drinking was positively associated with the number of drinks at restaurants, own home, another's home, and outdoors. Number of people <21 years old was positively associated with number of drinks at own home, and number of people <21 years old who consumed alcohol was positivity associated with number of drinks consumed at restaurants, own home, another's home, and outdoors.

Conclusions: Results suggest that social influence from close friends and from other underage youth are context-specific.