Substance Use Among Adolescents in California: A Latent Class Analysis

Abstract

Data from the California Healthy Kids Survey of 7th, 9th, and 11th graders were used to identify latent classes/clusters of alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use (N=418,702). Analyses revealed four latent classes of substance use which included non-users (61.1%), alcohol experimenters (some recent alcohol use; 22.8%), mild poly-substance users (lifetime use of all substances with less than three days of recent use; 9.2%), and frequent poly-substance users (used all substances three or more times in the past month; 6.9%). The results revealed that alcohol and marijuana use are salient to California adolescents. This information can be used to target and tailor school-based prevention efforts.

Trends in typologies of concurrent alcohol, marijuana, and cigarette use among US adolescents: An ecological examination by sex and race/ethnicity

“…We found that Hispanic and Asian youth were less likely to be concurrent users of some typologies than White adolescents (A+C and A+M+C) and null effects for the other typologies (A+M, M+C). These findings contradict previous research suggesting that Hispanic youth are at higher risk for concurrent use than their White peers (Connell et al, 2009; Gilreath et al, 2014; Gilreath et al, 2015), as well as research suggesting Asian youth are at lower risk for A+M and M+C than Whites and other racial/ethnic groups (Lanza et al, 2010; Ramo et al, 2012). Native American youth were found not to differ from Whites on use of any concurrent substance-use typology.…”

“…In general, male adolescents report higher rates of daily alcohol, marijuana, and cigarette use than female adolescents (Lanza et al, 2015; Miech et al, 2016). As for concurrent use, the most consistent sex effect has been found for occasional concurrent users (i.e., lifetime users of alcohol, marijuana and cigarettes, with little recent concurrent use), who are more likely to be female than male (Connell et al, 2010; Gilreath et al, 2014; Gilreath et al, 2015). However, findings have been mixed regarding sex differences in the frequent/recent use of alcohol, marijuana and cigarettes.…”

“…However, findings have been mixed regarding sex differences in the frequent/recent use of alcohol, marijuana and cigarettes. Gilreath et al (2014) and Gilreath et al (2015) found that males were more likely to be frequent/current users of A+M+C than females, whereas Connell et al (2010) found the opposite sex effect. Sex differences have also been equivocal regarding M+C use (Ramo et al, 2012); whereas some studies have found that male adolescents are more likely to be M+C users than females (Guxens et al, 2007; Victoir et al, 2007), others have found the opposite sex effect (Lanza et al, 2015; Suris et al, 2007), or no sex effect (Aung et al, 2004).…”

“…Some researchers have noted no difference in substance use typology between White and Hispanic adolescents (Lanza et al, 2010), whereas several others have suggested that Hispanic youth are more likely to be concurrent substance users than Whites (Connell et al, 2009; Gilreath et al, 2014; Gilreath et al, 2015). Among African American adolescents, several studies have documented a lower prevalence of concurrent substance use compared to White adolescents (Connell et al, 2009; Gilreath et al, 2015; Lanza et al, 2010; Tomczyk et al, 2016). However, when examining typology of concurrent use, researchers have found variability in risk between African American and White adolescents.…”

What are kids vaping? Results from a national survey of US adolescents

“…20 On the other hand, it may represent a standard, welldocumented class of polysubstance users who have simply extended their use of drugs to a new device. [21][22][23] Furthermore, the heightened use of nicotine in this group warrants future analysis to examine whether their level of nicotine inhaled reaches that of their peers who use cigarettes. A third limitation is that the study lacks information on youth who have vaped multiple, different substances within the past 30 days.…”