A Comparison of Marijuana Use Across Different Levels of Justice-Involved Populations

• Author: Traccy A.W. Martins,Jason A. Ford
• DOI: 10.1177/00220426211056304
• Date: 01 April 2022
• Published date: 01 April 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Journal of Drug Issues

2022, Vol. 52(2) 268–279

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/00220426211056304

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A Comparison of Marijuana

Use Across Different Levels of

Justice-Involved Populations

Traccy A.W. Martins

1

and Jason A. Ford

1

Abstract

A large portion of the U.S. population is justice-involved, an important at-risk population with

poor physical/mental health outcomes and increased rates of substance use. Using the 2018

National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the current study assesses marijuana use across level of

community-based justice involvement (i.e., arrest, probation, and parole) among adults. Given

increasing rates of marijuana use and a relative lack of research, the current study addresses an

important gap in the literature. Findings from logistic regression analysis show that adults who had

been arrested or were on probation were more likely to use marijuana compared to adults with

no justice involvement, while adults on parole were less likely to use marijuana than those on

probation. This study offers evidence of differences in marijuana use across level of justice in-

volvement, which may be attributable to other substance use behaviors, and has important

implications for criminal justice practice.

Keywords

marijuana use, cannabis use, justice involvement, justice-involved

Introduction

Marijuana is a commonly used drug, as nearly half of U.S. adults have used marijuana at some

point in their lifetime (Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality, 2019). Furthermore, as

marijuana becomes increasingly available for legal recreational or medical use, there is some

evidence that rates of marijuana use are on the rise among adults (Compton, Han, Jones, & Blanco,

2019;Salas-Wright, Vaughn, Cummings-Vaughn, Holzer, & Nelson, 2017;Kerr, Lui, Ye, 2018).

While state-level marijuana policies are rapidly changing, more than half of adults arrested for

drug offenses are still arrested for possession of marijuana (Drug Policy Alliance, 2019;Priso n

Policy Initiative, 2018). As a result of the “war on drugs,”a signif‌icant portion of the U.S.

population has been in contact with law enforcement. According to Walmsley (2015), the rate of

1

University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA

Corresponding Author:

Traccy A.W. Martins, Department of Sociology, University of Central Florida, 4000 Central Florida Boulevard, Orlando,

FL 32816, USA.

Email: Traccy.Martins@ucf.edu