Research & Resources

In this study researchers examined age-varying associations between young adult simultaneous alcohol and marijuana/cannabis use (SAM) and heavy episodic drinking (HED) and positive and negative affect to inform harm reduction efforts. Participants were 556 young adults, ages 19 to 26, who reported past-year alcohol use and lived in a state where alcohol and nonmedical cannabis use was legal for those 21 and over. There was a positive age-varying association between HED and SAM over time that was highest at age 19, decreased until age 20.7, increased until age 23.0, and decreased until the association became non-significant by age 25. Negative affect was positively associated with SAM from ages 20.7 to 23.0, peaking at age 21.8. Positive affect was positively associated with HED from ages 19.4 to 20.4 ages 22.5 to 24.5. In contrast, positive affect was not uniquely associated with SAM nor negative affect with HED across ages 19–25. The researchers suggest that preventive intervention and harm reduction efforts should attend to psychological context in which these behaviors occur.

This paper, “Age-related patterns in high-risk alcohol and cannabis use and their associations with positive and negative affect in young adulthood," was funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and published in the journal Addictive behaviors.