An Examination of Coping with Physical Health Symptoms as a Motive for Cannabis Use among Young Adults

Abstract

Existing measures assessing ‘coping’ as a motive for cannabis use typically include coping withmental health (MH) but not physical health (PH) symptoms, despite coping with PH symptoms being described in the literature. This study examined (1) the extent to which young adults (YA) used cannabis to cope with PH symptoms and for which symptoms they used it, (2) preliminary psychometric properties of coping with PH symptoms items, and (3) differential associations between coping with PH and MH symptoms and cannabis outcomes, in a community sample of 265 YAs with past 30-day use (Mage=24.6; 44% female, 7.5% gender diverse). Of participants, 40.6% reported at least occasional medicinal use, primarily for sleep, pain, and appetite. Pilot PH coping items had comparable descriptive statistics to Comprehensive Motives Questionnaire (CMQ) items, moderate to strong inter-item correlations, and convergent and discriminant validity with other CMQ motives. Quasi-poisson linear regressions indicated neither coping with PH nor MH symptoms were associated with use; both motives were positively associated with cannabis consequences. Results support coping with PH symptoms as a motive for cannabis use and suggest differential associations of PH and MH coping motives on cannabis outcomes.