Aims
To
assess the associations between types of cannabis control policies at country
level and prevalence of adolescent cannabis use.
Setting, Participants and Design
Multilevel
logistic regressions were performed on 172,894 adolescents 15 year of age who
participated in the 2001/2002, 2005/2006, or 2009/2010 cross-sectional Health
Behaviour in School-Aged Children (HBSC) survey in 38 European and North
American countries.
Measures
Self-reported
cannabis use status was classified into ever use in life time, use in past
year, and regular use. Country-level cannabis control policies were categorized
into a dichotomous measure (whether or not liberalized) as well as 4 detailed
types (full prohibition, depenalization, decriminalization, and partial
prohibition). Control variables included individual-level sociodemographic
characteristics and country-level economic characteristics.
Findings
Considerable
intra-class correlations (.15-.19) were found at country level. With respect to
the dichotomized cannabis control policy, adolescents were more likely to ever
use cannabis (odds ratio (OR) = 1.10, p = .001), use in past year (OR = 1.09, p
= .007), and use regularly (OR = 1.26, p = .004). Although boys were
substantially more likely to use cannabis, the correlation between cannabis
liberalization and cannabis use was smaller in boys than in girls. With respect
to detailed types of policies, depenalization was associated with higher odds
of past-year use (OR = 1.14, p = .013) and regular use (OR = 1.23, p = .038),
and partial prohibition was associated with higher odds of regular use (OR =
2.39, p = .016). The correlation between cannabis liberalization and regular
use was only significant after the policy had been introduced for more than 5
years.
Conclusions
Cannabis liberalization with depenalization and partial
prohibition policies was associated with higher levels of regular cannabis use
among adolescents. The correlations were heterogeneous between genders and
between short- and long-terms.
Below: Scatter plot of prevalence of regular cannabis use, by gender and cannabis liberalization status (%). HBSC 2001–2010 (N = 172,894
Full article at: http://goo.gl/Scnf2V
By:
Yuyan Shi
Department of Family Medicine
and Public Health, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California,
United States of America
Michela Lenzi
Department of Developmental and
Social Psychology, University of Padova, Padua, Italy
Ruopeng An
Department of Kinesiology and
Community Health, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign,
Illinois, United States of America
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