Differences in Marijuana and Alcohol Use Based On Cigarette Smoking Patterns of First-Year College Students

Like in other populations, college smoking patterns range from daily to experimental smoking (e.g., Sutfin et al., 2009). However, smoking during the college years may be different from other adult populations; college smokers do not smoke on daily basis (Harrison et al., 2008), and smoking is typically paired with other substances such as alcohol (Schane et al., 2009) and marijuana use (Dierker et al., 2008). In addition, there is limited research on how these patterns of substance use differ based on the various types of college smoking patterns, therefore, the goal of this study was to investigate whether smokers with different typologies (e.g., daily vs. occasional), report different frequency of binge drinking, and marijuana use across their first semester in college.

Participants consisted of 256 freshman student cigarette smokers (M=18.25, SD=.85; 67% female; 84% White) from a mid-western university. Participants completed a survey with questions about demographics, reasons for smoking, and weekly alcohol, cigarette, and marijuana use. Participants were surveyed during the beginning, middle, and end of their first semester. About 77% of the smokers indicated that they did not smoke on a daily basis. Latent growth models (LGM) were used to investigate whether weekly cigarette use, binge drinking, and marijuana use were changing throughout student’s first semester in college and whether there were differences based typology of smokers.

The results indicated that changes in weekly smoking levels differed based on smoker typology: occasional smokers were decreasing use over the span of the semester (-0.13, p= 0.04) while daily smokers were not. The results indicated that weekly binge drinking levels were different in the beginning of the semester (2.41, p<.001) and use was increasing throughout the semester (.124, p<.001) for both daily and occasional smokers. The results also indicated that weekly marijuana use varied during the beginning of the semester (2.54, p<.001) and use slightly decreasing throughout the semester (-.087, p=.03) for both daily and occasional smokers.  

This study supports previous research that many freshman college smokers are also binge drinking and smoking marijuana during their first semester on campus. Most notably, binge drinking seems to be increasing for both daily and nondaily smokers during the semester which should be taken into account when developing interventions for this population. However, marijuana use seems to be decreasing during students first semester in school, regardless of whether the individual was a daily or occasional smoker.  These results should be kept in mind when targeting different college smokers for smoking and substance use interventions as well as when interventions should be administered. The study indicates that the beginning of the semester may be a good time to intervene for all three substances. However, it is important to keep track of students drinking behavior throughout the semester since additional interventions may be needed.