Evaluating the drug use "gateway" theory using cross-national data: consistency and associations of the order of initiation of drug use among participants in the WHO World Mental Health Surveys.

ABSTRACT:

Background

It is unclear whether the normative sequence of drug use initiation, beginning with tobacco and alcohol, progressing to cannabis and then other illicit drugs, is due to causal effects of specific earlier drug use promoting progression, or to influences of other variables such as drug availability and attitudes. One way to investigate this is to see whether risk of later drug use in the sequence, conditional on use of drugs earlier in the sequence, changes according to time-space variation in use prevalence. We compared patterns and order of initiation of alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, and other illicit drug use across 17 countries with a wide range of drug use prevalence.

Method

Analyses used data from World Health Organization (WHO) World Mental Health (WMH) Surveys

SUBMITTER: Degenhardt L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2835832 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature