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Whither the Epidemic? Psychoactive Drug‐Use Career Patterns of College Students 1
Author(s) -
Goldstein Joel W.,
Gleason Terry C.,
Korn James H.
Publication year - 1975
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.1975.tb00669.x
Subject(s) - psychology , cannabis , class (philosophy) , scale (ratio) , social psychology , psychoactive substance , psychiatry , physics , quantum mechanics , artificial intelligence , computer science
Reported nonmedical use and intentions for future use of eight groups of psychoactive drugs were conceptualized and arrayed to represent a person's usage career. Intentions closely predicted usage eight months later. Changes in careers were analyzed from data obtained in surveys of all students at a univeristy in 1968 and three follow‐up surveys of the class of 1972. In 1968, the most common order of extent of use of the drug groups was: beer, hard liquor, tobacco, cannabis, depressants, amphetamines, hallucinogens, and narcotics. Students' starting, usage, and intent patterns for the drugs displayed hierarchical, Guttman‐like, scalability in approximately this order. Intentions to progress to new drugs on the scale were strong in all classes in 1968. In the class of 1972, however, despite growing experience with the less common drugs as they went through college, intentions to return to more common drugs grew and intentions to progress to new ones decreased, relative to both themselves as freshmen and to equivalent level classes in 1968. The pattern of these changes suggests that it is hazardous to extrapolate from early usage and intent data in predicting the long‐term course of usage.