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Cannabis Use Prevalence Up Across Adult Age Groups

After 2007, overall increase in adjusted odds of daily versus nondaily cannabis use for ages 12 to 64

TUESDAY, June 26, 2018 (HealthDay News) — Across adult age categories, there was an increase in the prevalence of daily cannabis use after 2007, according to a study published online June 13 in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

Pia M. Mauro, Ph.D., from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York City, and colleagues examined self-reported past-year cannabis use frequency for 722,653 participants ages 12 years and older from the 2002-2014 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. They investigated whether specific age groups disproportionately contributed to changes in cannabis use trends.

The researchers found that there was a decrease in the prevalence of daily cannabis use for participants ages 12 to 17 years before 2007 and a significant increase across adult age categories only after 2007. No significant differences in increases were seen across adult ages 18 to 64 years; the increases ranged between 1 and 2 percentage points. Among respondents aged 12 to 25 years and those aged 35 to 49 years, nondaily cannabis use decreased before 2007, while there were increases across adult age categories after 2007, especially for those aged 26 to 34 years (4.5 percentage points). After 2007, for those aged 12 to 64 there were increases in the adjusted odds of daily versus nondaily cannabis use.

“Increases in daily and nondaily cannabis use prevalence after 2007 were specific to adult age groups in the context of increasingly permissive cannabis legislation, attitudes, and lower risk perception,” the authors write.

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