Does drug prevention program participation help youths' aged 12-17 in preventing them from initiating Marijuana use?

Background: Among youths aged 12-17, the rate of past month illicit drug use and marijuana use respectively is 10.1% and 7.4%. The prevalence rate of youths' marijuana use increased from 7.3% in 2009 to 7.4% in 2010. Researchers have been developing strategies and programs to preventing youths' from initiating substance use. In the past several years, more attention has been given to implementation issues during the various stages of program development and diffusion. Objective: The objective of this study is to examine the relationship between youths' past year drug prevention program (DPP) participation and past month's initiation of marijuana use. Data and Methods: The data for this research are taken from 2010 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), which utilized multi-stage random probability sampling design. A total of 57,873 interviews were completed aged 12 and older. The current research consisted of 18,614 youths aged 12-17. Controlling for the effect of complex survey design, several weighted logistic regression models are estimated for measuring the relationship between youths' DPP participation in past year and their initiation of marijuana in past month. Results: Adjusted logistic regression results suggest that youths' who participated in DPP in past year are about 40% (OR: 0.60; 95% CI: 0.75-0.80) significantly (p<0.001) less likely to initiate marijuana use in past month. Knowledge of these relationships from this research might be useful for policy makers in developing improved and comprehensive prevention measures that will attract more youths aged 12-17 to participate and prevent them from initiating marijuana.