IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0225273.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Polysubstance use patterns and novel synthetics: A cluster analysis from three U.S. cities

Author

Listed:
  • Luther Elliott
  • Christopher Keith Haddock
  • Stephanie Campos
  • Ellen Benoit

Abstract

The rapid emergence of novel psychoactive substances within the past decade has raised new concerns about the harms associated with unregulated drug use. Synthetic analogues—chemically related to established psychoactive substances like cannabis sativa and catha edulis—in particular have proliferated rapidly, allowing little opportunity for scientific research or the establishment of informal guidelines for safe use among consumers. To explore how synthetic substance use relates to other forms of use, this paper presents an analysis of polysubstance use among a sample of 676 people who use illicit substances in the United States. Participants were sampled from three greater metropolitan areas (Houston/Galveston, Texas; New York City; and New Orleans, Louisiana). Study researchers used cluster-type analyses to develop dendrogram visualizations of the interrelationships between substance types. Results suggest a considerable variation in substance and polysubstance use patterns across states in the U.S. Polysubstance use clustered around well-observed combinations like MDMA/cannabis and cocaine/heroin. Synthetic cannabinoids and cathinones showed no strong clustering with other substances. High rates of binge drinking among users of other substances further support the importance of interventions sensitive to the clinical challenges of polysubstance use.

Suggested Citation

  • Luther Elliott & Christopher Keith Haddock & Stephanie Campos & Ellen Benoit, 2019. "Polysubstance use patterns and novel synthetics: A cluster analysis from three U.S. cities," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(12), pages 1-17, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0225273
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0225273
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0225273
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0225273&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0225273?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Shaw, S.Y. & Shah, L. & Jolly, A.M. & Wylie, J.L., 2008. "Identifying heterogeneity among injection drug users: A cluster analysis approach," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 98(8), pages 1430-1437.
    2. Golub, A. & Johnson, B.D., 2001. "Variation in youthful risks of progression from alcohol and tobacco to marijuana and to hard drugs across generations," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 91(2), pages 225-232.
    3. Chavent, Marie & Kuentz-Simonet, Vanessa & Liquet, Benoît & Saracco, Jérôme, 2012. "ClustOfVar: An R Package for the Clustering of Variables," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 50(i13).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Claire Ronsley & Seonaid Nolan & Rod Knight & Kanna Hayashi & Jano Klimas & Alex Walley & Evan Wood & Nadia Fairbairn, 2020. "Treatment of stimulant use disorder: A systematic review of reviews," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(6), pages 1-22, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. J. Williams & Rosalie Liccardo Pacula & Frank J. Chaloupka & Henry Wechsler, 2004. "Alcohol and marijuana use among college students: economic complements or substitutes?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 13(9), pages 825-843, September.
    2. Sutherland, Alex, 2012. "Is parental socio-economic status related to the initiation of substance abuse by young people in an English city? An event history analysis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 74(7), pages 1053-1061.
    3. Jeoffrey Dehez & Sandrine Lyser, 2024. "How ocean beach recreational quality fits with safety issues? An analysis of risky behaviours in France," Post-Print hal-04384330, HAL.
    4. Xiaowen Wang & Shanshan Yao & Mengying Wang & Guiying Cao & Zishuo Chen & Ziting Huang & Yao Wu & Ling Han & Beibei Xu & Yonghua Hu, 2020. "Multimorbidity among Two Million Adults in China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(10), pages 1-13, May.
    5. Lbath, Hanâ & Petersen, Alexander & Meiring, Wendy & Achard, Sophie, 2024. "Clustering-based inter-regional correlation estimation," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    6. Vanessa Kuentz-Simonet & Amaury Labenne & Tina Rambonilaza, 2017. "Using ClustOfVar to Construct Quality of Life Indicators for Vulnerability Assessment Municipality Trajectories in Southwest France from 1999 to 2009," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 131(3), pages 973-997, April.
    7. Wang, Endong & Alp, Neslihan & Shi, Jonathan & Wang, Chao & Zhang, Xiaodong & Chen, Hong, 2017. "Multi-criteria building energy performance benchmarking through variable clustering based compromise TOPSIS with objective entropy weighting," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 197-210.
    8. Amanda Geller & Jeffrey Fagan, 2010. "Pot as Pretext: Marijuana, Race, and the New Disorder in New York City Street Policing," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 7(4), pages 591-633, December.
    9. Gero Szepannek, 2022. "An Overview on the Landscape of R Packages for Open Source Scorecard Modelling," Risks, MDPI, vol. 10(3), pages 1-33, March.
    10. Julian Cardenas & Fernando Santa & Eva Kaštovská, 2021. "The Exudation of Surplus Products Links Plant Functional Traits and Plant-Microbial Stoichiometry," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(8), pages 1-16, August.
    11. Yao, Xingzhi & Izzeldin, Marwan & Li, Zhenxiong, 2019. "A novel cluster HAR-type model for forecasting realized volatility," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 1318-1331.
    12. Ana Belén Ramos-Guajardo, 2022. "A hierarchical clustering method for random intervals based on a similarity measure," Computational Statistics, Springer, vol. 37(1), pages 229-261, March.
    13. Wang, Endong, 2017. "Decomposing core energy factor structure of U.S. residential buildings through principal component analysis with variable clustering on high-dimensional mixed data," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 203(C), pages 858-873.
    14. Xavier Bry & Lionel Cucala, 2022. "A von Mises–Fisher mixture model for clustering numerical and categorical variables," Advances in Data Analysis and Classification, Springer;German Classification Society - Gesellschaft für Klassifikation (GfKl);Japanese Classification Society (JCS);Classification and Data Analysis Group of the Italian Statistical Society (CLADAG);International Federation of Classification Societies (IFCS), vol. 16(2), pages 429-455, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0225273. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.