Nonmedical Prescription Drug Use among College Students

国家和大学的流行病学研究提供了强有力的证据，证明美国大学生中非医疗处方药的使用正在增加（例如，约翰斯顿等人，2003; Mohler-Kuo等人，2003年）。然而，非医疗处方药的使用很少受到关注，也很少有流行病学研究能够充分评估滥用处方药的非医疗使用风险最大的个人的特征。因此，拟议研究的广泛，长期目标是记录与美国大学生非医疗处方药使用相关的纵向趋势和风险因素。拟议的二次分析将利用“大学健康行为研究”（Wechsler等人，2002年），每年收集超过10，000名美国大学生的五个独立国家样本的横截面数据（1993年，1997年，1999年，2001年和2004年）;重点将是非医疗使用的处方药，包括阿片类镇痛药，镇静/抗焦虑药和用于注意力缺陷多动障碍（ADHD）的兴奋剂药物。具体目标是：1）评估1993年至2004年美国大学生非医疗使用处方药的流行率和纵向趋势; 2）检查与非医疗处方药使用风险增加相关的学生水平和机构水平特征; 3）比较开始使用非医疗处方药的年龄与开始使用酒精的年龄，大麻和其他药物的使用，以及调查非医疗处方药使用的起始年龄与过去一年物质滥用和依赖的流行率之间的关系; 4）检查大学水平的非医疗处方药使用与其他药物使用之间的关联，并探索处方药的非医疗和医疗使用之间的关联。将使用多变量统计分析来检查与非医疗使用相关的患病率和风险因素的纵向趋势。这项研究的结果将对了解处方药滥用的流行病学、预防和治疗具有重要意义。

National and college-based epidemiological studies provide strong evidence that nonmedical prescription drug use is increasing among U.S. college students (e.g., Johnston et al., 2003; Mohler-Kuo et al., 2003). However, nonmedical prescription drug use has received scant attention and little epidemiological research exists that adequately assesses the characteristics of those individuals most at risk for nonmedical use of abusable prescription drugs. Thus, the broad, long-term objectives of the proposed research are to document longitudinal trends and risk factors associated with nonmedical prescription drug use among U.S. college students. The proposed secondary analyses will utilize the "Study of College Health Behaviors" (Wechsler et al., 2002), which collects cross-sectional data on five independent national samples of over 10,000 U.S. college students each year (1993, 1997, 1999, 2001, and 2004); the focus will be on the nonmedical use of prescription drugs including opiate analgesics, sedative/anxiolytics, and stimulant medications for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The specific aims are: 1) to assess the prevalence and longitudinal trends of nonmedical use of prescription drugs among U.S. college students between 1993 and 2004; 2) to examine the student-level and institutional-level characteristics that are associated with increased risk for nonmedical prescription drug use; 3) to compare the age of initiation for nonmedical prescription drug use to the ages of initiation for alcohol, marijuana and other drug use as well as investigate the relationship between age of initiation for nonmedical prescription drug use with the prevalence of past year substance abuse and dependence; 4) to examine the association between nonmedical prescription drug use and other drug use at the college-level, and to explore the association between nonmedical and medical use of prescription drugs. Several multivariate statistical analyses will be used to examine the longitudinal trends in the prevalence rates and risk factors associated with nonmedical use. Findings from this research will have important implications for the understanding of the epidemiology, prevention and treatment of prescription drug abuse.