Soft Drug Sequencing among a Sample of Alabama Youth: A Longitudinal Analysis

Abstract

In testing a modified version of Kandel’s (1975) drug sequencing hypothesis, the study addressed two current weaknesses in the drug sequencing literature, namely, the empirical ambiguity of the role of cigarette initiation in drug sequencing and the lack of temporal ordering in the initiation of multiple drugs. It was expected that of the American youth who initiated soft drug use, alcohol was the first drug initiated. Among the subsample of juveniles who went onto use other soft drugs, it was expected that cigarette onset occurred next. Finally, it was expected that a small proportion of alcohol and cigarette initiates would go on to initiate marijuana use. This hypothesis was tested using secondary, longitudinal data derived from 283 youth who completed Waves 1-9 of the Mobile Youth Survey. Guttman scalogram analysis was utilized to arrive at the results. Articulated are the findings, which yielded no statistical support for the hypothesized sequence. Also discussed are the implications that the results have for school drug prevention programs.