Characteristics of Smoked Drug Use Among Cocaine Smokers

• NCJ Number: 166671
• Journal: American Journal on Addictions Volume: 6 Issue: 3 Dated: (Summer 1997) Pages: 237-245
• Author(s): D A Gorelick; M S Simmons; N Carriero; D P Tashkin
• Date Published: 1997
• Length: 9 pages
• Grant Number(s): DA03018; DA04268
• Sponsoring Agency: National Institute on Drug Abuse
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Survey
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: DCC. Paper presented at the College on Problems of Drug Dependence, 54th Annual Scientific Meeting, 1992, and 57th Annual Scientific Meeting, 1995, and at the Annual Meeting of the American Thoracic Society, 1995

Annotation

Data were collected from a convenience sample of 228 physically healthy, largely treatment-seeking cocaine smokers with minimal histories of other smoked drug use (other than tobacco and marijuana) or injection drug use using structured interviews to assess characteristics of their smoked drug use.

Abstract

Subjects ranging in age from 21 to 60 years were recruited between 1988 and 1990 from patients undergoing cocaine addiction treatment at the West Los Angeles Veterans Administration Medical Center and several private treatment programs in the Los Angeles area. Most subjects who smoked cocaine also smoked either marijuana only (17.5 percent), tobacco only (17 percent), or both (61 percent), with the onset of such smoking almost always preceding the initiation of regular cocaine smoking. Few significant differences were observed in sociodemographic or cocaine use characteristics among subgroups of subjects who smoked either cocaine only or cocaine and marijuana and/or tobacco. More than one-third of marijuana smokers quit (45 percent) or decreased (38 percent) their use after starting regular cocaine smoking, whereas only 5 percent of tobacco smokers did so. Findings suggest that marijuana smoking is more influenced by regular cocaine smoking than is tobacco smoking. 17 references and 3 tables