"Tell Me How Much Your Friends Consume"-Personal, Behavioral, Social, and Attitudinal Factors Associated with Alcohol and Cannabis Use among European School Students

Risk and Protective Factors for Gambling Among Youth by origin: Findings from the three waves of cross-sectional Finnish School Health Promotion Study among 238,939 Students

Gambling is a public health problem that can cause many kinds of harm. The aim of this study was to examine youth gambling by origin, and the risk and protective factors associated with it. The data was drawn from the School Health Promotion Study (n = 238,939) conducted in Finland, representative of the 14 to 16-year-old Finnish schoolchildren. Cross-tabulations and multivariate logistic regression were used in assessing the association between origin and weekly gambling. Interaction terms of origin and background variables related to substance use, peer and family relations and leisure time were then calculated to assess inter-group differences. The study showed that foreign-born, migrant origin and youth from mixed families were more likely to gamble weekly compared to youth with Finnish-born parents. The likelihood of gambling was particularly high among foreign-born and migrant-origin youth. Weekly gambling was significantly more common among boys than girls in all studied youth groups, and it was particularly common among foreign-born boys compared to other groups. Substance use was associated with weekly gambling and even more so among foreign-born youth. There were also differences by origin in the strength of association between other background factors and weekly gambling. Foreign-born boys appear to be especially vulnerable to multiple health and social risks including gambling, making them a particularly important group for targeted preventive programs. Preventive efforts are needed to enhance public awareness, boost parental supervision, and limit gambling-related risks. Special attention is needed to prevent migrant-origin boys from developing problems with gambling.

Framing substance use as "recreational" is neither accurate nor helpful for prevention purposes

This debate paper discusses six reasons why the term "recreational substance use" should be avoided. (1) Social norms and beliefs are drivers of behavior; therefore, the normalized use of the term conveys injunctive norms of a fully socially acceptable substance. Injunctive norms are the most important drivers of initiation into substance use. (2) The illusion of being in control, suggesting that if consumed for leisure and recreation it can easily be controlled; (3) Idealized social representations that fuel an idealized image of an alternative glamourous or mindful consumption culture; (4) Downplaying potential harms; (5) The implicit promise of everyday pleasure, the ever-growing potency of cannabis products does not fit the narrative of its use for recreation; (6) Industry as a trojan horse branding discourse of the concept of medical cannabis to normalize the image of non-medical use: to complement "therapeutic" with "recreational". "Recreational use" is a subjective ill-defined term. This debate paper aims to find a better terminological solution, honestly denominating with a neutral, unbiased, and objective connotation what is now called "recreational use". Thus, we propose using the term "non-therapeutic" use.

A cross-national study on adolescent substance use: Intentions, peer substance use, and parent-adolescent communication

This longitudinal two-wave cross-national study investigated whether intentions, friends' substance use, and parent-adolescent substance-use specific communication predict adolescent alcohol and cannabis use 1 year later, while estimating reversed links. The temporal order between these two substances was also examined. We used multi-group cross-lagged panel modeling on data from 2 ethnically and socioeconomically diverse samples: Sint Maarten (N = 350; M_age  = 14.19) and the Netherlands (N = 602; M_age  = 13.50). Results showed that in the Netherlands, cannabis use predicts more subsequent problems (alcohol use, intention to use cannabis, and affiliation with cannabis-using friends). But for Sint Maarten, alcohol use predicts more subsequent problems (cannabis use, intention to use alcohol, and affiliation with alcohol-using friends). These opposing results demonstrate that caution is warranted when generalizing results across countries.

Abrupt peaks in perceived risk of occasional drug use after changing the question order in a repeated self-administered survey

Background

Question-order changes in repeated surveys can distort comparisons. We want to describe the evolution of drug risk perceptions among Spanish adolescents and assessing whether the 2006 peaks in perceived risk of occasional drug use can be explained by question-order changes.

Methods

The subjects were secondary students from a biennial national survey during 2000-2012. A one-off intervention was applied in 2006, replacing the two-adjacent items on perceived risk of occasional and regular use of each drug by non-adjacent items. Annual prevalence of high-risk perception were obtained for occasional and regular use of cannabis, heroin, cocaine and ecstasy. Subsequently, the 2006 percent level change (PC) in such were estimated prevalence using segmented Poisson regression, adjusting for various student and parent covariates.

Results

The 2006 PC in prevalence of high-risk perception of occasional drug use ranged from +63% (heroin) to +83% (ecstasy). These PCs were very high in all considered subgroups. However, the 2006 PC in prevalence of high-risk perception of regular drug use ranged from 1% (heroin) to 12% (cannabis). The evolution of preventive interventions does not suggest alternative causal hypotheses for 2006 peaks other than question-order changes.

Conclusion

Within the cognitive heuristics framework, the 2006 spikes in perceived risk of occasional drug use were most likely due to a release of the anchor exerted by perceived risk of regular drug use over that of occasional use triggered by 2006 question-order changes. In repeated surveys it is inexcusable to pre-test the effect of any change in questionnaire format.

Normative Misperceptions About Cannabis Use in a Sample of Risky Cannabis Users

Introduction

This study examines normative misperceptions in a sample of participants recruited for a brief intervention trial targeting risky cannabis use.

Methods

Participants who were concerned about their own risky cannabis use were recruited to help develop and evaluate intervention materials. At baseline, participants reported on their own cannabis use and provided estimates of how often others their gender and age used cannabis in the past 3 months. Comparisons were made between participants estimates of others cannabis use with reports of cannabis use obtained from a general population survey conducted during a similar time period.

Results

Participants (N = 744, mean age = 35.8, 56.2% identified as female) largely reported daily or almost daily cannabis use (82.4%). Roughly half (55.3%) of participants estimated that others their age and gender used cannabis weekly or more often in the past 3 months, whereas the majority of people in the general population reported not using cannabis at all.

Conclusions

Normative misperceptions about cannabis use were common in this sample of people with risky cannabis use. Limitations and possible future directions of this research are discussed, as well as the potential for targeting these misperceptions in interventions designed to motivate reductions in cannabis use.

ClinicalTrialsorg number

NCT04060602.

[School-based alcohol prevention with virtual reality]

Risky alcohol consumption among adolescents continues to be of high public health relevance in Germany. Therefore, preventive measures should promote the skills of adolescents to deal with alcohol and peer pressure. Interactive and gender-sensitive primary prevention programs in schools have a great potential to reach the target group and to increase the effectiveness of interventions. Digital tools such as virtual simulations may help with this process.Virtual reality (VR) enables the experience of risk situations in a safe environment. Internationally, there are currently two VR alcohol prevention programs for adolescents. Their co-creation with the target group was a core element, and comprehensive research on the usability and subjective effectiveness has already been published. Conventional effectiveness evaluations such as randomized controlled trials, however, have limitations with interactive formats. Alternative and complementary evaluation approaches are needed in the future. Furthermore, the potential of tailoring VR to recipients has to be examined. In this context, a gender-sensitive design is both an opportunity and a challenge.Further research is needed to study possibilities to use VR in alcohol prevention in adolescents in Germany.

Cannabis Use, Use Motives and Cannabis Use Disorder Among Berlin College Students

This study described cannabis use behavior among college students in Berlin, in particular, differences in use motives between subjects with frequent use and those with signs of cannabis use disorder (CUD). Cross-sectional data were collected via an online survey among Berlin college students ( N=9350; 50.7% women; Mage=24.4). Motivation scales were computed based on an exploratory factor analysis. Effects of these motive scales were compared using multivariate regression models, where the dependent variable was use intensity (ordinal), frequent use (twice or more per week, binary) or a positive substance use disorder screening test (binary). Cannabis use is known to be particularly prevalent among Berlin college students, which was confirmed by our data. The most frequent use motive was enhancement, which, however, was not associated with frequent use or CUD. The motives predicting frequent use (sociability) are different from motives predicting CUD (coping), even when controlling for a wide array of covariates.

Money used in gaming is associated with problem gambling: Results of the ESPAD 2019 Finland

BACKGROUND AND AIMS

The convergence of gaming and gambling may pose a risk for adolescents. Thus, it is important to find out how these behaviours are associated with other addictive behaviours in order to develop efficient preventive measures for youth. The aim of this study was to examine 1) whether problematic gaming and money used for gaming activities are risk factors for gambling, and 2) what kind of impact adolescents' substance use along with other factors related to friends and parents have on this association.

METHODS

The European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs data, 2019 of Finnish adolescents aged 15 to 16 (N = 4595). Cross-tabulations with Rao-Scott's chisquare tests were applied to study the associations of the background factors with gambling in the past 12 months. A multinomial logistic regression model was fitted for the outcome variable (gambling in the past 12 months) adjusted for all independent and background variables.

RESULTS

Problematic gaming alone was not associated with gambling participation, whereas using money for digital games increased the risk of gambling. Boys gamble more than girls. The use of alcohol and drugs increased the risk of gambling. Parental monitoring reduced the risk of gambling, whereas hanging around weekly with friends increased the risk.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

Using money on gaming sites may put some adolescents at risk of developing problems with either gaming or gambling. The link between using money in digital games and gambling participation calls for preventive measures, intervention and regulatory acts.