Friday, August 22, 2014

Age of first use and addiction.

Saw an interesting panel on drug abuse here in Lorain County. The speaker gave an interesting stat about age of first use and addiction. I asked him for more detail and he referred me to his source. It turns out the source says exactly the same thing that he did:

“One in four people who used any addictive substance before they turned 18 have a substance use disorder, compared with one in 25 who first used any of these substances at age 21 or older.(41)”

Footnote 41, in turn, essentially just says "This was our analysis of data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health"

This is frustrating because it means that if I actually want more detail, I would have to run the numbers myself. CASA itself looks kinda like drug war propaganda, which is also irritating, because I was looking for something more data driven and helpful.

http://www.casacolumbia.org/addiction-research/reports/adolescent-substance-use

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