ArticleAnnals of epidemiology2022
What is the prevalence of drug use in the general population? Simulating underreported and unknown use for more accurate national estimates.
Article in Annals of epidemiology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- Considering unintentional exposure when testing for cocaine use via oral fluid testing.Forensic science international · 2026Article
- Impact of partial cannabis legalisation in Luxembourg: An interdisciplinary perspective.Drug and alcohol dependence reports · 2026Article
- Productivity Losses From Substance Use Disorder in the U.S. in 2023.American journal of preventive medicine · 2026Article
- Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome, 2016 to 2022.JAMA network open · 2025Article
- Polysubstance use patterns among individuals applying for opioid use disorder treatment in the U.S.Journal of substance use · 2025Article
- Characteristics and mental health of psychedelic mushroom and multi-psychedelic users relative to non-psychedelic users in American adults, 2020-2021.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- Improving prevalence estimates of mental health and well-being indicators among sexual minority men: a propensity-weighting approach.American journal of epidemiology · 2024Article
- Estimation of the prevalence of opioid misuse in New York State counties, 2007-2018: a bayesian spatiotemporal abundance model approach.American journal of epidemiology · 2024Article
- The comorbidity of diabetes-depression and its association with disability amongst elderly prison inmates.Revista espanola de sanidad penitenciariaArticle
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
purposeTo outline a method for obtaining more accurate estimates of drug use in the United States (US) general population by correcting survey data for underreported and unknown drug use.
methodsWe simulated a population (n = 100,000) reflecting the demographics of the US adult population per the 2018 American Community Survey. Within this population, we simulated the "true" and self-reported prevalence of past-month cannabis and cocaine use by using available estimates of underreporting. We applied our algorithm to samples of the simulated population to correct self-reported estimates and recover the "true" population prevalence, validating our approach. We applied this same method to 2018 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) data to produce a range of underreporting-corrected estimates.
resultsSimulated self-report sensitivities varied by drug and sampling method (cannabis: 77.6%-78.5%, cocaine: 14.3%-22.1%). Across repeated samples, mean corrected prevalences (calculated by dividing self-reported prevalence by estimated sensitivity) closely approximated simulated "true" prevalences. Applying our algorithm substantially increased 2018 NSDUH estimates (self-report: cannabis = 10.5%, cocaine = 0.8%; corrected: cannabis = 15.6%-16.6%, cocaine = 2.7%-5.5%).
conclusionsNational drug use prevalence estimates can be corrected for underreporting using a simple method. However, valid application of this method requires accurate data on the extent and correlates of misclassification in the general US population.
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