Research has demonstrated the importance of parent drug use behaviors for child health attitudes, beliefs and behavioral contingencies, and the intergenerational transmission of substance use disorders is well- established. However, the majority of this research has viewed drugs in a binary manner: legal and illicit. As marijuana use becomes increasingly socially acceptable, and policy shifts away from criminalization of marijuana and marijuana users, research that separates marijuana use from use of other illicit drugs is becoming increasingly necessary. In particular, questions about the influence of parental marijuana use on adolescent children's perceptions of marijuana use are of clear relevance in the current social climate. The proposed project aims to investigate the mechanisms that underpin the intergenerational transmission of marijuana use and dependence within a social context. The project uses data from several consecutive years of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health that link parent and child respondents to perform mediation analyses to examine the impact of parent marijuana use and dependence on the attitudes, beliefs and behaviors of their adolescent children. In particular, attention will be paid to the impact of parental marijuana use on parent/child communication about drugs, and on the nature and direction of relationships between parent use, parent/child communications, child attitudes and beliefs, and child behaviors. The impact of the research will be to begin to form an evidence base for common-sense regulation of legal marijuana that takes into account the impact of marijuana use on the health of non-users. Further, results from this study will seek to inform pediatricians and family and adolescent health practitioners on the relative importance of parent drug use behaviors on offspring health, and point to areas for investigation of intervention strategies. The project and research training plan is designed to support the applicant's doctoral studies in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard School of Public Health. Ms. Sokol's goals for this project are to gain a full understanding of the psychology of families, and the processes and mechanisms by which intergenerational transmission of drug use behaviors occur. Ms. Sokol further aims to enhance her research and methodological skills as a social and psychiatric epidemiologist, and as a teacher, with the long- term goal of a career as an independent researcher and professor in public health and drug use epidemiology.
Findings from the research conducted under this project will have important implications for the practice of pediatrics and adolescent medicine by suggesting potential opportunities for intervention on the intergenerational transmission of marijuana use and dependence. Findings will also broaden current social and political discourse on marijuana use, by drawing into discussion issues surrounding the impact of marijuana use on non-users. Finally, this project will contribute to literature on normalization of drug use behaviors.
