Cannabis treatment outcomes among legally coerced and non-coerced adults

This study is a retrospective audit of the administrative clinical records of 27,198 adults presenting to public Texas treatment programs with cannabis as their primary drug problem between 2000 and 2005.Of the 69% legally coerced into treatment, there was less psychological distress and greater likelihood of having completed treatment compared with non-coerced clients. Participants who were legally coerced into treatment were also more likely to have received less intensive forms of treatment and to have not used cannabis in the month prior to 90-day post-treatment follow-up.More public health information is needed on cannabis dependence and increased availability of subsidised early and brief interventions in a variety of primary health care settings would reduce the late presentations of the more severely impaired voluntary clients. The limitations of this dataset are discussed.Substance use and related problems have presented an increasing challenge for most countries over the past few decades [1]. Cannabis is the most commonly used of the illicit drugs internationally [2]. A substantial proportion of cannabis users develop cannabis-related problems, including abuse and dependence [3,4]. Recent analyses comparing the past year prevalence of cannabis use disorder in large US epidemiological studies between 1991 and 2002 found significant increases from 1.2% to 1.5% with disproportionate increases in African-American and Hispanic men and in African-American females [5]. There are estimated to be 4.1 million Americans aged 12 years or over who abused or were dependent on cannabis, accounting for around 60% of the illicit drug use disorders overall [6].The scientific evidence on the nature and treatment of cannabis use disorder, however, has only developed over the past decade. While there is a small but growing literature of the efficacy of interventions for cannabis use disorder, there are few reports on the effectiveness of cannabis treatment as it is provided wi