Search PubMed⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

R R Clayton

Publications and source records attributed to R R Clayton.

31 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

Multiple drug use. Epidemiology, correlates, and consequences.

The initial focus is on the conceptual issues essential to the understanding of multiple drug use. This is followed by a discussion of the developmental nature of multiple drug use and the various strategies that have been designed to measure multiple use. The third section of the paper contains a review of the extent of multiple drug use in various segments of society with data from the Monitoring-the-Future surveys of high school seniors, the National Survey on Drug Abuse, and the Treatment Outcome Prospective Study of drug abuse treatment clients. The conclusion is that multiple drug use is pervasive. The next section deals with several consequences associated with multiple drug use: automobile accidents, delinquency, and emergency room visits. The final section outlines some of the prevention and treatment implications of multiple drug use from a public policy perspective.

Adolescent↗

Vietnam military service and marijuana use.

The effect of military service in Vietnam on drug use among veterans is examined on the basis of data obtained from a nationwide random sample of 2,510 young men. It is generally believed that illicit drug use was more extensive in Vietnam in the 1970s than in earlier years of the conflict. Therefore variables were constructed to reflect location of service (United States; overseas, but not Vietnam; and Vietnam) and the time of service (before 1970; 1970 or later). The results of the analysis indicate that: military service in Vietnam had no significant effect on marijuana use while on active duty, service in 1970 or later had a significant positive effect on during service use while in the service, and location of military service and time of service had a significant interactive effect on rates of marijuana use after discharge from military service. The interaction of service in Vietnam and military service after 1970 has the strongest effect on the veteran's marijuana use in civilian life.

Adult↗

"Turning on" other persons to drugs.

Data obtained in a recent national survey are examined to test two hypotheses about drug transmission. The hypothesis that transmission of drug use to others is most likely to occur within a short period of time after initial use is supported. For each drug or drug class, at least one-half of the users who transmitted drug use to others did so within a span of 2 years after they began to use the drug. One-fourth of the marijuana users "turned on" others. Marijuana users are more likely to transmit their drug use than are users of other illicit drugs, but most drug users never "turn on" others. The hypothesis that drug transmission occurs only within a short period of time after onset of use is rejected. Among marijuana users who "turned on" others, 29% of them did so 5 or more years after they first used marijuana.

Adult↗

Interpersonal influences on male drug use and drug use intentions.

The relationship between (1) the respondent's perception of the drug behavior of his father, mother, siblings, current friends, and wife/female partner; and (2) past drug use and future drug use intentions for tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, psychedelics, stimulants, sedatives, heroin, other opiates, and cocaine is examined among a representative sample of men in the U.S. population who were 20-30 years old in 1974 (N = 2,510). For each drug the results indicated that current friends' and wife/partner's drug behaviors are the factors most strongly associated with the respondent's past drug use as well as his intentions of future drug use. Although substantially less important, siblings' drug behavior also appears to be a source of influence, while the drug behavior of mothers and fathers is only minimally associated with drug use and future intentions.

Adult↗

The effectiveness of Drug Abuse Resistance Education (project DARE): 5-year follow-up results.

BACKGROUND: This article reports the results of a 5-year, longitudinal evaluation of the effectiveness of Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE), a school-based primary drug prevention curriculum designed for introduction during the last year of elementary education. DARE is the most widely disseminated school-based prevention curriculum in the United States. METHOD: Twenty-three elementary schools were randomly assigned to receive DARE and 8 were designated comparison schools. Students in the DARE schools received 16 weeks of protocol-driven instruction and students in the comparison schools received a drug education unit as part of the health curriculum. All students were pretested during the 6th grade prior to delivery of the programs, posttested shortly after completion, and resurveyed each subsequent year through the 10th grade. Three-stage mixed effects regression models were used to analyze these data. RESULTS: No significant differences were observed between intervention and comparison schools with respect to cigarette, alcohol, or marijuana use during the 7th grade, approximately 1 year after completion of the program, or over the full 5-year measurement interval. Significant intervention effects in the hypothesized direction were observed during the 7th grade for measures of students' general and specific attitudes toward drugs, the capability to resist peer pressure, and estimated level of drug use by peers. Over the full measurement interval, however, average trajectories of change for these outcomes were similar in the intervention and comparison conditions. CONCLUSIONS: The findings of this 5-year prospective study are largely consonant with the results obtained from prior short-term evaluations of the DARE curriculum, which have reported limited effects of the program upon drug use, greater efficacy with respect to attitudes, social skills, and knowledge, but a general tendency for curriculum effects to decay over time. The results of this study underscore the need for more robust prevention programming targeted specifically at risk factors, the inclusion of booster sessions to sustain positive effects, and greater attention to interrelationships between developmental processes in adolescent substance use, individual level characteristics, and social context.

Child↗

The association of testosterone with nicotine use in young adult females.

This pilot laboratory study examined the relationship of testosterone levels, carbon monoxide (CO) levels, current and adolescent nicotine use, and histories of pubertal onset in 30 young adult female smokers. These females had completed questionnaires regarding nicotine use in the 7th through 10th grades, and again at age 21 as part of a cohort study of drug use. In addition, history of pubertal onset was obtained at age 21, as were testosterone and CO levels. Testosterone levels were positively correlated with cigarette use in the last 30 days (P< or =.01), CO levels (P< or =.05), cigarette use reported in the 7th and 10th grades (P< or =.05), and negatively correlated with age of pubertal onset (P< or =.001). The relationship of testosterone to nicotine will be discussed.

Adolescent↗

The epidemiology of alcohol and drug abuse among adolescents.

The primary purpose of this paper was to review systematically some of the more salient findings from a decade of research on the epidemiology of alcohol and drug abuse among adolescents. Data from most of the on-going nationwide studies regarding lifetime, past year, and past month use of various drugs were examined. While there is evidence of a downturn for some of the indicators, it is still too early to know if this is a temporary shift in rates or the beginning of meaningful trends toward lower levels of drug use. The second purpose was to challenge the alcohol and drug fields to consider more seriously the problem of multiple drug use and abuse. This was accomplished by showing that the relative percentage of youth who have used "only marijuana" has gone down as the percentage of youth who have used marijuana, other illicit drugs, and cigarettes and alcohol as well, has increased. Regression and discriminant analyses of data from the 1980 Monitoring the Future study of high school seniors reveals that variables that previously have differentiated users from nonusers are also useful in differentiating types of multiple drug users. The most important conclusion from this paper is that persons characterized as "daily" users of marijuana are better typed as multiple drug users.

Adolescent↗

A contextual model of adolescent alcohol use across the rural-urban continuum.

In the research presented here, we develop and test with respondents from a broad range of contexts a multilevel social control model of adolescent substance use, integrating macro- and microsociological and criminological perspectives. Specifically, this research examines the individual-level social control processes or mechanisms thought to lead to alcohol use embedded in school contexts in different community settings along the rural-urban continuum. In this way we determine 1) the main effects of individual- and contextual school-level variables and 2) the conditioning or moderating influences of school climate on individual alcohol use and on individual-level processes leading to alcohol use. Furthermore, given that our sample contains students from a broad range of settings along the rural-urban continuum, our findings address the appropriateness of conceptualizing rural and urban drug use and their respective etiologies as dichotomous. In this respect our findings suggest that heterogeneity in drug use exists within rural school settings as well as within urban school settings, and that examining rural drug use as separate from urban drug use is not justified.

Adolescent↗