Background
Drug use among college students is associated with adverse academic and health outcomes, and risks to personal safety.
Objectives
This study utilizes data from a longitudinal study to estimate annual prevalence, cumulative lifetime prevalence, and incidence of ten types of drug use during the eight years after college entry and the average age of onset of each drug used.
Methods
Participants (N=1,253; 52% female) were young adults who were originally enrolled as first-time, first year students at a university in the mid-Atlantic US. Annual personal interviews gathered data about the use of seven illicit drugs and three prescription drugs used nonmedically. Annual follow-up rates ranged from 76% to 91%.
Results
Marijuana was the most commonly used drug in every year of the study, with the highest annual prevalence estimates in Year 3 (47%wt). In Year 8, when the modal age of participants was 25, 29%wt used marijuana during the past year. Nonmedical use of prescription drugs was more prevalent during college than in the later years of the study. Although the prevalence of cocaine and ecstasy use was low (cumulative prevalence estimates of 17%wt and 13%wt respectively), incidence for these drugs were particularly high in the later years of the study.
Conclusion
Drug use is prevalent among college students, and drug use persists among young adults, even after many have graduated college. More attention should be directed at identifying and intervening with students at risk for drug use to mitigate possible academic, health, and safety consequences.
Background
College students who engage in high-risk drinking patterns are thought to “mature out” of these patterns as they transition to adult roles. College graduation is an important milestone demarcating this transition. We examine longitudinal changes in quantity and frequency of alcohol consumption between the college years and the four years after graduation; and explore variation in these changes by gender and race/ethnicity.
Methods
Participants were 1128 college graduates enrolled in a longitudinal prospective study of health-risk behaviors. Standard measures of alcohol consumption were gathered during eight annual personal interviews (76% to 91% annual follow-up). Graduation dates were culled from administrative data and self-report. Spline models, in which separate trajectories were modeled before and after the “knot” of college graduation, were fit to eight annual observations of past-year alcohol use frequency and quantity (typical number of drinks/drinking day).
Results
Frequency increased linearly pre-graduation, slightly decreased post-graduation, and then rebounded to pre-graduation levels. Pre-graduation frequency increased more steeply among individuals who drank more heavily at college entry. Quantity decreased linearly during college, followed by quadratic decreases after graduation.
Conclusions
Results suggest that the post-college “maturing out” phenomenon might be attributable to decreases in alcohol quantity but not frequency. High-frequency drinking patterns that develop during college appear to persist several years post-graduation.
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