The power of the proposition: Frequency of marijuana offers, parental knowledge, and adolescent marijuana use
Introduction
Marijuana use is associated with many undesirable outcomes, including inferior academic achievement (Bryant et al., 2003), risky sexual behavior (Bryan et al., 2012), increased tobacco and alcohol use (Siegel et al., 2013), and greater vulnerability to addictive behaviors (Hurd et al., 2014). Adolescent usage is particularly detrimental as it affects neurocognitive development, with younger users at proportionally greater risk of harm (Gruber et al., 2012). Predictors of marijuana use that traditionally garner attention include parental knowledge (Lac and Crano, 2009), sensation seeking (Eisenman et al., 1980), and peer norms (Elliott and Carey, 2012, Pedersen et al., 2013). The effect of the frequency with which adolescents are offered marijuana has received less attention, and is the focus of the current research.
Wagner and Anthony (2002) credit Frost (1927) with introducing the concept of exposure opportunity. Opportunity is crucial because “Being presented with an opportunity to use drugs is the first step of drug involvement … drug use is only possible given exposure to drug use opportunities” (Benjet et al., 2007, p. 128). Beyond opportunity (i.e., being around others who are using a drug), being offered marijuana amplifies drug use cues (Wertz and Sayette, 2001). Thus, adolescents predisposed to risky behavior may be more likely to act on their predilection when an offer is made (Voelkl and Frone, 2000), and even those who may never have considered marijuana use might otherwise accede, if offered.
In support of the importance of whether adolescents receive offers to use marijuana in relation to future use, Ellickson et al.'s (2004) 30 school study indicated that merely being offered marijuana predicted current use, and use one year later. In research on secondary school students, Manning et al. (2001) reported that 65.9% of users reported using marijuana as a result of an offer. Grady et al. (1986) found that 58% of 8th graders from two New England towns reported being offered marijuana, and approximately 65% accepted the offer.
Greater parental knowledge (i.e., awareness of the child's activities; Stattin and Kerr, 2000) is a commonly noted protective factor in research on adolescent marijuana use (Lac and Crano, 2009). Even though peers are highly influential in adolescence, parents still hold major sway over their children's decisions, including those involving drug use (Blake et al., 2001, Fletcher et al., 1998, Krosnick and Judd, 1982, Lamb and Crano, 2014, Li et al., 2002). In addition to highlighting the utility of investigating the number of marijuana offers adolescents receive, the current study assesses whether being offered marijuana provides an indirect path between parental knowledge and later marijuana use. If the number of times an adolescent is offered marijuana provides an indirect path between parental knowledge and marijuana use, the utility of the construct of marijuana offers will not only be highlighted, it also will offer a potential approach for future prevention efforts. Working with parents to minimize the likelihood that their children will be in situations in which marijuana is likely to be offered, for example, may prove an effective prevention strategy.
Previous studies offer reason to suspect that frequency of marijuana offers indeed provides an indirect path from parental knowledge to marijuana use. An association between parental knowledge and substance use has been identified (Lac and Crano, 2009). Not every longitudinal study supports a direct relationship between parental knowledge and use (Tebes et al., 2011), but such a relationship has been indicated (Abar et al., 2014) and indirect effects have been reported by Cleveland et al. (2005), who found an effect of parental knowledge and reduced substance use through reduced susceptibility. Further, although focused on parental monitoring (i.e., parental tracking and surveillance) rather than the more global construct of knowledge (i.e., awareness of the child's activities; e.g., Crouter and Head, 2002, Stattin and Kerr, 2000), Pinchevsky et al. (2012) reported a negative relationship between parental monitoring in high school and marijuana offers when students attended university (also see Chen et al., 2005). Further, as noted, a relationship between offers received and marijuana use was reported by Ellickson et al. (2004). However, whether the number of offers an adolescent receives provides an indirect path from knowledge to use is relatively untested. If being offered marijuana is a mediator of the relationship between parental knowledge and marijuana use, it will highlight the “power of the proposition” (i.e., the importance of being offered marijuana as a predictive variable), and provide insight into future prevention programs.
Using a nationally representative sample of adolescents, the first goal of the present research is to examine the lagged associations between the number of marijuana offers received and adolescent marijuana use, and to compare this relationship with those involving more common predictors (e.g., tobacco and alcohol use, refusal skills, and delinquency). Although frequency of offers has been associated with current and future marijuana use, study samples have been relatively small or constrained geographically. Further, the predictive association of offers with marijuana use has only occasionally been inspected over and above other common predictors of use, such as alcohol and tobacco use, family communication, and academic achievement (e.g., Ellickson et al., 2004). As a second appraisal of the importance of the frequency with which an adolescent is offered marijuana, and to explore a potential path for parent-based prevention efforts, we also determine whether being offered marijuana provides an indirect path between parental knowledge and marijuana use.
Section snippets
Respondents and sampling procedure
Data from a nationally representative sample of 9–18-year olds in the United States (N = 8117) were used. The survey was conducted in conjunction with the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, a social intervention that used nearly all known mass-media to persuade adolescents to avoid illicit substances (Hornik et al., 2003). Respondents were randomly selected from 81,000 households within 90 geographic areas (90 of 100 Primary Sampling Units; see National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2006, for a
Results
All constructs measured with more than one item were tested for measurement invariance with respect to gender. The factor structure was not significantly different between male and female participants for all scales except delinquency. To address this issue, the item “Gotten into a serious fight in school or at work” was removed. Being offered marijuana and marijuana use were positively skewed. The majority of participants reported receiving no offers in the past 30 days (76.0% in Y1 and 69.1%
Discussion
Prevention specialists have focused on many variables to understand and reduce adolescent drug use, but the influence of the number of marijuana offers adolescents receive has garnered relatively little attention (e.g., Pinchevsky et al., 2012, Wagner and Anthony, 2002). The results of the current study indicate that a greater focus on the number of marijuana offers an adolescent receives could be beneficial as frequency off offers represents an important determinant of marijuana use.
The first
Role of funding source
Funding for this study was provided by NIDA Grant R01 DA030490; NIDA had no further role in analysis and interpretation of data, in the writing of the report, or in the decision to submit the paper for publication.
Contributors
Jason Siegel conceptualized the study with contributions from Cara Tan, Mario Navarro, Eusebio Alvaro, and William Crano. Mario Navarro managed the literature searches and summaries of previous related work. All authors contributed to the data analysis plan. Cara Tan analyzed the data. Jason Siegel and Cara Tan wrote the first draft of the manuscript. William Crano, with contributions from Mario Navarro and Eusebio Alvaro, edited the manuscript. All authors have approved the final manuscript.
Conflict of interest
All authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
Acknowledgments
Preparation of this research was supported by a grant from the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse (R01 DA030490). The contents of this paper are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Institute.
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Who receives cannabis use offers: A general population study of adolescents
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Predictors and consequences of prescription drug misuse during middle school
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