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The present study seeks to evaluate the relationships between cannabis-related communication and outcomes of interest such as cannabis-related risk perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors among young adults. Young adults who were at risk for cannabis use were surveyed online in 2020. Results showed that exposure to online educational messages was associated with higher intentions of engaging in peer intervention, while exposure to online advertising was related to higher intention to use cannabis. Anti-cannabis interpersonal discussion was associated with increased risk perceptions, less favorable cannabis attitudes, and a higher likelihood of peer intervention. More pro-cannabis interpersonal discussion was associated with decreased risk perceptions, more favorable cannabis attitudes, higher use intention, and decreased likelihood of peer intervention. In addition, pro-cannabis interpersonal discussion mediated the relationship between exposure to advertising and cannabis risk perceptions, intentions to use cannabis, attitudes about cannabis, and the likelihood of peer intervention. In contrast, anti-cannabis interpersonal discussion mediated the relationship between exposure to educational messages online and cannabis risk perceptions and the likelihood of peer intervention. These findings underscore the need to regulate online cannabis marketing and the importance of investing in online education campaigns to increase public understanding of the risks associated with cannabis consumption in young adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Celebrity disclosures and narratives are popular strategies in health promotion. However, less is known about their joint effects and the mechanisms through which they function. A 2 (narrative type: celebrity vs. layperson) x 2 (personal relevance: low vs. high) online experiment (N = 248) tested the impact of different narrative types in increasing awareness about prescription opioid abuse. Results indicated that a celebrity narrative is more persuasive than its layperson counterpart. Also, personal relevance toward opioid addiction moderated the influence of narrative type. Celebrity narratives evoked more positive attitudes toward opioid prevention and greater behavioral compliance intentions with the recommended action for low-relevance individuals. Transportation and identification mediated the effects of celebrity narratives on participants' issue attitudes and behavioral intentions, but only for low-relevance individuals. Practically, the data suggest that incorporating celebrities in health narratives about opioid addiction prevention facilitates behavioral compliance, especially for individuals to whom a pressing health issue like opioid misuse is currently of low relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public stigma characterizes three leading health issues: prescription opioid addiction, obesity, and cigarette smoking. Attributions of individual responsibility are often embedded in negative public attitudes around these issues and can be important to stigma's development and reduction. Research suggests that narrative messages may hold promise for influencing attributions and stigma in these health contexts. Using a national sample of American adults from an online panel (N = 5,007), we conducted a survey-embedded randomized experiment, assigning participants to read one of six messages about one of three health issues. All participants read a statement detailing the magnitude of their assigned health problem, after which some respondents received a short inoculation message (serving as a comparison group) or a narrative message emphasizing external factors while acknowledging personal responsibility for the issue. Some participants also read a counter message emphasizing personal responsibility for the health issue to replicate competitive messaging environments surrounding these issues. Relative to those who received only the magnitude of problem message (comparison group 1) or the magnitude of problem and inoculation messages (comparison group 2), the narrative message reduced prescription opioid addiction stigma and increased attributions of responsibility to groups beyond the individual. Narrative effects were mixed for obesity, had no effect on attributions or stigma around cigarette smoking, and were generally consistent whether or not respondents received a counter message. Narrative messages may be a promising approach for shifting responsibility attributions and reducing public stigma around prescription opioid addiction, and may have some relevance for obesity stigma-reduction efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Since the late 1990s public opinion about cannabis legalization has become drastically more liberal, and some states have begun to legalize cannabis for recreational use. Why have attitudes changed so much? Prior research has considered a few of the reasons for this change, but this is the first comprehensive and empirically-based study to consider the wide range of potential causes for how and why this happened. We use data from the General Social Survey, National Study of Drug Use and Health, and word searches from the New York Times. We find that attitudes largely liberalized via intracohort changes. Most Americans developed more liberal views, regardless of their race and ethnicity, gender, education, religious or political affiliation, or religious engagement. Changes in cannabis use have had minimal effects on attitudes, and legalization of cannabis has not prompted attitude change in neighboring states. As to root causes, evidence suggests that a decrease in religious affiliation, a decline in punitiveness, and a shift in media framing all contributed to changing attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Although public perceptions of methamphetamine (meth) consider all forms of the drug as the same, this is not true among those who use it. Our aim is to examine how those who use meth perceive two forms of meth (ice and shake) using the theoretical framework of symbolic boundaries.Methods: We rely on data collected from a photo-ethnography with people who use methamphetamine in rural Alabama. The ethnography consisted of formal interviews (with 52 participants), informal observations, and photography.Results: Participants had a strong preference for ice (49 of 52 preferred ice over shake). In discussing why they prefer ice they point to the various short- and long-term health problems associated with shake. This distinction allowed them to create symbolic definitions of shake as being dirty due to impure chemicals and its users as desperate.Conclusion: We argue that this symbolic differentiation of the two forms allows users to frame themselves as rational users (i.e., they avoid the unsafe form of meth) and shape use patterns and prevalence, with shake being used infrequently and often intravenously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) elicits widespread normative opposition, yet little research has investigated what underlies these judgments. We examine this question comprehensively, across 13 studies. We first test the hypothesis that opposition to PED use cannot be fully accounted for by considerations of fairness. We then test the influence of 10 other potential drivers of opposition in an exploratory manner. We find that health risks for the user and rules and laws prohibiting use of anabolic steroids reliably affect normative judgments. Next, we test whether these patterns generalize to a different PED-cognitive-enhancement drugs. Finally, we sketch a framework for understanding these results, borrowing from Social Domain Theory (e.g., Turiel, 1983). We argue that PED use exemplifies a class of violations with properties of moral, conventional, and prudential offenses. This research sheds light on a widespread, but understudied, normative judgment, and illustrates the utility of exploratory methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our aims are to describe and explain the structure of the Cannabis Abuse Screening Test (CAST) across countries. Standard statistical analyses fail to describe and explain several variables simultaneously while taking account of the group structure of individuals. The 2011 European School Survey Project on Alcohol and other Drugs (ESPAD): 5204 last-year cannabis users aged 15-16 from 13 European countries. Multigroup principal component analysis (mgPCA) and multigroup partial least squares (mgPLS). MgPCA shows that the CAST has a two-dimensional structure (frequency of use/problems and non-recreational use/dependency symptoms). All the countries present a good concordance with the common structure, except Kosovo, Lichtenstein and Romania. MgPLS shows that three explanative variables (in a total of eight) are mainly related with the CAST (the frequencies of cannabis use in the last 12 months and in the last 30 days and the age at first cannabis use) while Kosovo, Lichtenstein and Romania also present specificities. The CAST structure appears stable in the 13 countries except for Kosovo, Lichtenstein and Romania that also show specific relationships between the CAST variables and their determinants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors discuss the need to find phrases that present safe injection sites as a positive aspect in opioid abuse. They mention the current attitude towards the idea of safe injection sites, the reframing of the concept to overdose prevention sites, and how the wording change increases support.

The present study examined the psychological mechanisms underlying the indirect effects of antidrug-specific social capital on targeted parent-child communication about drugs. Moreover, it explored why campaign exposure and social capital exert interactive influences on parent-child communication. Using a three-round longitudinal panel data set from the National Survey of Parents and Youth (NSPY), we found that when taking into account behavioral attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control, parents’ attitude toward talking about drugs with their child mediated the effects of antidrug-specific social capital on targeted parent-child communication about drugs. Furthermore, behavioral attitude mediated the interactive effects of campaign exposure and social capital on parent-child communication. The implications of these findings for research on the connection between media exposure and conversation and for public health interventions were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Objective To report the prevalence and comparison of cancer-linked health behaviors and identify risk factors associated with unhealthy behavior among adolescent siblings and cancer survivors. Methods The Child Health and Illness Profile—Adolescent Edition (CHIP—AE) was completed by 307 survivors and 97 sibling controls 14–20 years of age. Results Risky behavior ranged from 0.7% to 35.8% for survivors and 1.0% to 41.2% for siblings. Comparisons of sexual behavior, tobacco, alcohol, or illicit drug use utilizing continuous data revealed no differences between groups. Categorically, survivors were less likely to report past smokeless tobacco use or current use of beer/wine or binge drinking (p-values range from .01 to .04). Survivors with better mental health were at lower risk for poor behavioral outcomes. Conclusions Adolescent survivors engage in risky health behaviors at rates generally equivalent to their siblings. Aggressive health education efforts should be directed toward this high-risk population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives In this article, we seek to better understand how a genomic vision of addiction may influence drug prevention and treatment. Though social influences on substance use and abuse (e.g., peer and family influence, socioeconomic status) are well documented, biomedical intervention is becoming increasingly technoscientific in nature. We wish to elucidate how emphasizing biological influences on substance use may lead to a vision of addiction as a phenomenon isolated within our bodies and neurochemistry, not lived daily within a complex social web of relationships and a particular political economy, including the tobacco industry, which aggressively markets products known to cause harm. Methods We explore the emerging view of addiction as a 'disease of the brain' in open-ended interviews with 86 stakeholders from the fields of nicotine research and tobacco control. Interview data were analyzed using standard qualitative techniques. Results Most stakeholders hold a medicalized view of addiction. Though environmental variables are understood to be a primary cause of smoking initiation, the speed and strength with which addiction occurs is understood to be a largely biological process. Though stakeholders believe that an increased focus on addiction as a disease of the brain is not likely to lead to widespread unrealistic expectations for cessation therapies, they remain concerned that it may reinforce teenagers' expectations that quitting is not difficult. Finally, stakeholder responses indicate that genetic and neuroscientific research is unlikely to increase or decrease stigmatization, but will be used by interest groups to buttress their existing views of the stigma associated with smoking. Conclusion We argue that the main potential harms of focusing on biological etiology stem from a concept of addiction that is disassociated from social context. Focusing on genetic testing and brain scans may lead one to overemphasize pharmaceutical 'magic bullet cures' and underemphasize, and underfund, more traditional therapies and public health prevention strategies that have proven to be effective. Genetic research on addiction may fundamentally change our conception of deviance and our identities, and may thus transform our susceptibility to substance use into something isolated in our biology, not embedded in a biosocial context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors discuss an article by J. L. Klosky and colleagues on the risk-taking behaviors among adolescent survivors of childhood cancer and their siblings. They comment on the study findings reported in Klosky and colleagues' article that showed that health behaviors among patients with cancer and cancer survivors may influence risk-taking behaviors such as tobacco and drug use. They also note that the study suggests similarity on risk behaviors among adolescents and those of their siblings.