Marijuana protective behavioral strategies as a moderator of the effects of risk/protective factors on marijuana-related outcomes

A Day in the Life: A Daily Diary Examination of Marijuana Motives and Protective Behavioral Strategies Among College Student Marijuana Users

“…Parsing these kinds of effects is important for the development and tailoring of event-level interventions. Previous research suggests that individuals who use a higher than average number of PBS tend to report lower marijuana use/consequences (Bravo, Anthenien et al, 2017;Pedersen et al, 2016). In this study, we found that individuals who used more PBS on a particular day than their own average were more likely to report lower number of marijuana use sessions for that day and achieve lower levels of subjective high for that day.…”

“…To date, preliminary evidence from cross-sectional studies indicate that marijuana PBS use is negatively associated with marijuana use and consequences at the interindividual or betweensubjects level (Bravo, Anthenien, et al, 2017;Pedersen et al, 2017). However, we are unaware of any published studies examining these associations at the intraindividual or within-subjects level.…”

Use of Protective Behavioral Strategies among Young Adult Veteran Marijuana Users

“…Like college students (Bravo et al, 2017a; 2017b; Pedersen et al, 2017; 2016), we found that for young veteran marijuana users, use of protective behavioral strategies reduced risk for frequent marijuana use and negative marijuana-related consequences. Male veterans reported more frequent marijuana use compared to female veterans, which fits with prior work that young adult males use marijuana more frequently than young females (Haberstick et al, 2014; Hasin et al, 2015; Johnson et al, 2015).…”

“…Marijuana protective behavioral strategies are behaviors used before, during, after, or instead of using marijuana, such as taking periodic breaks if one feels like they are using marijuana too frequently, limiting the amount of marijuana one uses in one sitting, and avoiding using marijuana before work or school (Pedersen et al, 2017a; Pedersen, Hummer, Rinker, Traylor, & Neighbors, 2016a). Recent work has identified that use of these strategies by young adult college students are associated with fewer consequences and less frequent use (Bravo, Anthenien, Prince, Pearson, & the Marijuana Outcomes Study Team, 2017a; Bravo, Prince, Pearson, & the Marijuana Outcomes Study Team, 2017b; Pedersen et al, 2017a; 2016a) but no study to date has looked at use of marijuana protective strategies among veterans or among those with mental health symptoms. Use of these strategies may be particularly important for marijuana users who report symptoms of PTSD and depression as use of strategies may help protect them from further distressing consequences in their life as well as from exacerbation of symptoms.…”

Making Decisions With Trees: Examining Marijuana Outcomes Among College Students Using Recursive Partitioning

“…We examined correlates of marijuana-related negative consequences, and our findings garner support for marijuana use frequency (Pearson, Liese, et al, 2017) and positive urgency as risk factors for increased marijuana-related negative consequences (Zapolski et al, 2009), whereas PBS were shown to be a protective factor associated with decreased negative consequences (Pedersen et al, 2016). In this same sample of current marijuana users, PBS use (i.e., strategies used before, during, or after marijuana consumption that reduce use, intoxication, and/or harm) has been shown to distinguish between marijuana user classes such that the more problematic user classes reported lower use of these strategies (Pearson, Bravo, et al, 2017); PBS use has been shown to mediate a variety of risk/protective factors (including impulsivity-like traits) on marijuana outcomes (Bravo, Prince, et al, 2017); and PBS use has been shown to moderate the relationship between marijuana use frequency and marijuana-related consequences (Bravo, Anthenien, Prince, Pearson, & Marijuana Outcomes Study Team, 2017). In the face of such findings, it is imperative that these associations be examined experimentally and longitudinally to garner additional evidence that these are actually causal factors that predict marijuana-related consequences as opposed to epiphenomena that are simply associated with consequences.…”