Associations between Alcohol-Free Sources of Reinforcement and the Frequency of Alcohol and Cannabis Co-Use among College Freshmen

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Issue Date
2023-02-07Author
Jun, Daiil
Fazzino, Tera L.
Publisher
MDPI
Type
Article
Article Version
Scholarly/refereed, publisher version
Rights
© 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.
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Co-use of alcohol and cannabis is common among young adults in the United States. A behavioral economics framework indicates that greater engagement in substance-free sources of reinforcement may be protective against co-use frequency. The current study tested the association between proportionate alcohol-free reinforcement and the frequency of co-use among college freshmen. Participants (N = 86) were freshmen who enrolled in a freshman orientation course and completed surveys at the beginning of the semester. Past month alcohol use, cannabis use, and reinforcement from alcohol-free and alcohol-involved activities were assessed. A zero-inflated Poisson regression was used to test the association between proportionate alcohol-free reinforcement and days of co-use. The results indicated that proportionate alcohol-free reinforcement was negatively associated with co-use days in the count model when controlling for alcohol use days and gender as covariates (β: −3.28, p = 0.016). Proportionate alcohol-free reinforcement did not significantly differentiate individuals who did not engage in co-use in the zero-inflated model (β: −1.68, p = 0.497). The study suggested that greater proportionate alcohol-free reinforcement may be associated with lower engagement in the co-use of alcohol and cannabis among young adults. Increasing engagement in alcohol-free sources of reinforcement may be considered a target for co-use prevention or harm reduction efforts.
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Citation
Jun, D.; Fazzino, T.L. Associations between Alcohol-Free Sources of Reinforcement and the Frequency of Alcohol and Cannabis Co-Use among College Freshmen. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2023, 20, 2884. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20042884
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