Association of State Drug Laws with Nonmedical Use of Prescription Medications in Adolescents

Abstract

Objective The aim of the study is to examine the associations between mandatory access prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs), pain management clinic (PMC) laws, and doctor shopping (DS) laws with adolescent nonmedical use of prescription medications (NUPM). Methods We linked 2011–2015 Youth Risk Behavior Survey data on 364,103 adolescents across 40 states with PDMP, PMC laws, and DS laws. We conducted a 2-way fixed effects logistic regression model to examine the associations between state drug laws and adolescent self-reported NUPM. Results We found some evidence that implementation of a mandatory access PDMP was associated with a decrease in nonmedical use of prescription drugs at the P = 0.079 level (average marginal effect: −0.017, 95% confidence interval = −0.036 to 0.002), while there were no associations with the implementation of PMC and DS laws. Conclusions Our findings suggest that current state drug laws to combat NUPM are inadequate for adolescents.