{"doi":"10.15288/jsad.22-00262","title":"Trends in Young Adult Alcohol and Cannabis Use through the First Year and a Half of the COVID-19 Pandemic from a Community Cohort Sample","abstract":"Objective: There has been concern regarding increased substance use during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly among young adults, but much of this concern stemmed from cross-sectional or short-term data collected early in the pandemic. This study followed a young adult community cohort throughout the first 1.5 years of the pandemic to examine longer-term trends/trajectories in alcohol and cannabis use behaviors. Method: Beginning before the COVID-19 pandemic (January 2020), 656 young adults completed up to eight surveys on substance use and other behaviors, which extended through August 2021. Multilevel spline growth models estimated changes in alcohol/ cannabis use in three segments: (a) from pre-pandemic to April 2020, (b) from April 2020 to September/October 2020, and (c) from September/October 2020 to July/August 2021. Abstainers were removed from the analyses, yielding subsamples for alcohol models (n = 545; M age = 25.6 years; 59.8% female) and cannabis models (n = 303; M age = 25.6; 61.4% female). Results: Drinking frequency initially increased (3% per month), decreased in the second segment (4% per month), and plateaued in the final segment. Drinking quantity significantly decreased in all three segments: 4% per month in segment one, 3% per month in segment two, and 1% per month in the final segment. Cannabis frequency and quantity showed no significant changes across the first two segments, then significantly decreased in the final segment (3% and 6% per month, respectively). The significant changes for cannabis frequency/ quantity were moderated by age, such that older participants had steeper decreases in the final segment. Conclusions: Findings highlight that young adult alcohol and cannabis use generally declined across the first 1.5 years of the COVID-19 pandemic, contrary to widespread concerns.","journal":"Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs","year":2023,"id":370773,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":6,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.8947,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":886982,"name":"Brian H. Calhoun","orcid":"0000-0002-2666-0133","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":314095,"name":"Charles B. Fleming","orcid":"0000-0002-1357-5706","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":314097,"name":"Christine M. Lee","orcid":"0000-0001-7899-8120","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":654909,"name":"Scott Graupensperger","orcid":"0000-0002-8655-1190","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":22,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:15:41.237096Z","pmid":"36971770","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}