Polydrug use by high-school students: involvement and correlates

A hierarchical cluster analysis was performed on 273 self-admitted high-school drug users' descriptions of how frequently they had employed marijuana, stimulants, depressants, hallucinogens, solvents, and opiates during the preceding year. Four types of polydrug users were identified and considered as representing an ordinal scaling of the students along a continuum of overall involvement with drugs, and each user was assigned an index score based on his typal membership. A stepwise multiple regression was then performed to discover which of the students' background characteristics and attitudes were related to their polydrug involvement scores. The search for pleasant sensations, the desire for expanded creativity, and the belief that one would cease taking drugs if they were conclusively shown to be harmful were more powerful predictors of polydrug involvement than any of the sociocultural factors.