All posts by thump2022

In addition, to the extent that use of one substance affects the usage of another among adolescents, accounting for this interdependence in substance use is important as it can minimize the possibility of obtaining spurious relationships and possibly biased model estimates. While some studies indicate that cigarette smoking is a strong predictor of the concurrent…

However, this finding was only significant in women and was weaker and no longer significant after bronchodilator use. In the same birth cohort at age 45, Hancox et al further reported a significant negative association of marijuana joint years with forced expiratory flow at 25% and 75% of the pulmonary volume, but this association was…

The findings by Register & Williams , who use the 1984 wave of the NLSY, concur in that general marijuana-use to have a positive effect on wages. These results, in conjunction with less extreme conclusions by Kaestner and Burgess & Propper , who conclude that illicit drug use does not have a significant adverse impact on employment,…

PSUs exhibited greater temporo-occipital BOLD signals to wins than to losses, findings consistent with a recent meta-analysis reporting that 86% of addiction-related neuroimaging studies demonstrate significant visual cortex activity to drug cues . Although the RGT did not test drug-related responses, our results demonstrate an analogous relationship to general reward cues, suggesting that PSUs may…

Premise surveys in LA County also indicated that unlicensed dispensaries were more likely to be found located near sensitive areas where dispensary regulations prohibit them . Thus, although there is a smaller number of unlicensed dispensaries operating in a city compared to the total number of dispensaries, unlicensed outlets may have greater impact of the…

A variable is generally considered a mediator if it carries the influence of a given independent variable to a given dependent variable . Mediation is often assessed by how much the independent variable affects the mediator, and how much the mediator affects the dependent variable, and whether the effect of the independent variable on the dependent…

Outcomes before and after the policy is implemented are compared between the study group and the comparison group, which allows the investigator to account for whether a general secular trend was influencing both groups. I compared high school students’ marijuana use trends in the City of Los Angeles to trends in the cities that never…

Adolescence is a time when community context becomes an increasingly important developmental influence . The communities where young people live shape their substance use perceptions and behaviors by how the environment encourages or prevents substance use, e.g., via the attitudes of their parents and peers or the availability of drugs and alcohol in their neighborhood.…

Consequently, since medical marijuana was legalized in California in 1996 a patchwork of local legislation has developed where regulations governing marijuana differ from one local jurisdiction to the next. These local regulations include hundreds of medical marijuana dispensary bans enacted by cities in California, some of which have been in place for over a decade…

After a brief detour through the harm reduction movement in the late 1980s and 1990s, I trace the rise of the anti-prohibitionist branch and how it relates to the two earlier branches of drug policy reform. I close the chapter with a brief description of the current state of the movement and the chief areas…