Trends in cannabis use among justice-involved youth in the United States, 2002-2017

Little is known regarding trends in cannabis use among justice-involved youth. We hypothesize that cannabis use will be higher over time among justice-involved youth who, on average, are more likely to be exposed to and seek out cannabis.

The present study compares trends in cannabis use among justice-involved youth (past year) with youth in the general population age 12-17 who have not been arrested in the past year.

Public-use data as part of the 2002-2017 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), which does not include state-level identifiers, was used. Males constitute 51% of the total sample. Among justice-involved youth, 66.4% were males. We employed logistic regression analyses with survey year as an independent variable and past-year cannabis use as the dependent variable. A series of logistic regressions examined the association between cannabis use and psychosocial and behavioral factors.

The prevalence of past-year cannabis use among justice-involved youth (3.09% of the sample) steadily increased from 54% in 2002 to 58% in 2017 (AOR = 1.018, 95% CI = 1.004-1.034), while the concurrent prevalence of cannabis use among youth with no past year arrests decreased from a high of 14% in 2002 to 12% in 2017 (AOR = 0.993, 95% CI = 0.990-0.997).

Study findings suggest that cannabis use is increasing among justice-involved youth.