Research Article
Simultaneous use of Alcohol, Tobacco and Cannabis in Relation to Severity of Substance Dependence: A Study among Young Swiss Men
| Stéphanie Baggio1*, Joseph Studer1, Stéphane Deline1, Alexandra N’Goran1, Meichun Mohler-Kuo2, Jean-Bernard Daeppen1 and Gerhard Gmel1,3-5 | |
| 1Alcohol Treatment Centre, Lausanne University Hospital CHUV, Av. Beaumont 21 bis, Pavillon 2, CH-1011 Lausanne, Switzerland | |
| 2Institute of Social- and Preventive Medicine, University of Zurich, Hirschengraben 84, CH-8001 Zurich, Switzerland | |
| 3Addiction Switzerland, Case postale 870, CH-1001 Lausanne, Switzerland | |
| 4Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, 250 College St, Toronto, Ontario, M5T 1R8, Canada | |
| 5University of the West of England, Frenchay Campus, Coldharbour Lane, Bristol BS16 1QY, United Kingdom | |
| Corresponding Author : | Stéphanie Baggio Alcohol Treatment Centre Lausanne University Hospital CHUV Av. Beaumont 21 bis, Pavillon 2 CH-1011 Lausanne, Switzerland Tel: +41 21 3143951 Fax: +41 21 3140562 E-mail: Stephanie.Baggio@chuv.ch |
| Received December 17, 2013; Accepted April 28, 2014; Published April 30, 2014 | |
| Citation: Baggio S, Studer J, Deline S, N’Goran A, Mohler-Kuo M, et al. (2014) Simultaneous use of Alcohol, Tobacco and Cannabis in Relation to Severity of Substance Dependence: A Study among Young Swiss Men . J Addict Res Ther S10:002. doi:10.4172/2155-6105.S10-002 | |
| Copyright: © 2014 Baggio S, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. | |
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Abstract
Objective: This study investigated patterns of the simultaneous use of alcohol, tobacco and cannabis among young polydrug users, and whether use of one substance might be a cue for use of another and associations with the severity of substance dependence.
Methods: The study focused on 3 subsamples from the ongoing Swiss Cohort Study on Substance Use Risk Factors (C-SURF, N=5,990). It used 12 months of data on alcohol/tobacco co-users, alcohol/cannabis co-users and tobacco/cannabis co-users (N=2,660, 1,755 and 1,460 respectively. Simultaneous use, numbers of symptoms of substance dependence, and hazardous use of alcohol, tobacco and cannabis were assessed. The effect of simultaneous polydrug use (SPU) on the numbers of symptoms of substance dependence was tested using analysis of variance.
Results: Polydrug use was most common as SPU, and less common as non/occasional SPU. Moreover, when participants started to use one substance while using another, the severity of substance dependence was more strongly associated with the triggered substance than with cue.
Conclusions: This study highlights the necessity to take SPU into account. First, SPU rather than separate drug use was the most common pattern for polydrug users. Second, frequent SPU was associated with increased numbers of symptoms of substance dependence compared to non/occasional SPU. Furthermore, SPU may reveal the severity of substance use dependence, when substance use is triggered by a cue substance. For these reasons, SPU should be a serious cause for concern for prevention and intervention purposes.
