A recent study investigated the influence of social context on marijuana use among college students. The authors utilized ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to measure social marijuana use. The EMA consisted of three text messages sent to participants each day for two weeks, to which participants were instructed to respond by providing details about their most recent use of marijuana. Participants were 56 students (63% female) at one Colorado university (all data were collected before recreational marijuana legalization). The text messages asked participants to report the time participants spent using marijuana since the last prompt, social context of marijuana use (alone or with others), and craving level. At baseline, participants reported their levels of endorsement of marijuana’s social facilitation abilities and peer acceptance of marijuana use, negative marijuana-related consequences, histories of marijuana use initiation, alcohol use, and demographic characteristics, as well as DSM-IV criteria for cannabis abuse and dependence. Results indicated, on average, participants reported using marijuana on over 25 of the last 30 days, the most common methods of smoking marijuana were using a small pipe or water pipe, and over half of participants reported drinking four or more alcoholic drinks per occasion. Beta regression was used to assess the proportions of participants endorsing each variable and multilevel logistic regression was used to model the likelihood of marijuana use with others at each instance of reporting (controlling for other variables). Participants reported 1,132 total instances of marijuana use during the study period; 76.2% of these occurred with others. Most participants reported using marijuana with others at least half of the time. Results of the beta regression suggested the proportion of use with others was positively related to social facilitation score (beta = 0.086, p = 0.002). The authors interpreted the results of the logistic regression as indicating that an increase of 10 minutes spent using marijuana was associated with a 59% increase in the odds of using with others. For a one-unit increase in the social facilitation, the odds of using with others would increase by about 15%, and those with a DSM-IV dependence diagnosis were expected to have an almost 300% increase in the odds of using with others. These results were consistent with previous literature, which has found peers can influence marijuana use behaviors.
Take away: This study utilized text messages to prompt college students to report the social context of their marijuana use. Results indicated endorsement in marijuana’s social facilitation abilities, time spent smoking marijuana, and having a cannabis abuse or dependency diagnosis were associated with significantly higher odds of using marijuana with others.