On the reciprocal structure of adolescent use of alcohol, cannabis and harder drugs and delinquency - results of a German longitudinal study

• In Event: Addiction, substance abuse and their effects

Abstract

In recent years, studies have demonstrated the close relationship between substance use and delinquency among young people, although the dynamics of this relationship and its causal structure remained unclear for a long time. In particular, American studies show that bidirectional effects exist between the two behaviours (Mason & Windle, 2002; Mason et al., 2003; D'Amico et al., 2008; Merrin et al., 2016; Kim et al., 2019). To date, there are no studies in Germany that have examined the effect structure. In the current study, eight waves of data from the CrimoC study (Crime in the modern city - A longitudinal study on the delinquency of young people in Duisburg) were used, from 2002 (13 years; 7th grade; 3,411 respondents) to 2009 (20 years), to investigate the relationship between delinquency and substance use - separately for alcohol, cannabis and harder drugs. An mediation model is assumed according to which early alcohol consumption increases the probability of delinquent behaviour with subsequently increased consumption rates of cannabis and other drugs and negatively reinforcing increased delinquency. A trivariate latent curve model with structured residuals is used to investigate the causality in the effect structure at the individual level. The results are discussed.

Authors

• Stefanie Kemme, University of Münster

• Jasper Bendler, Bielefeld University