Who’s laughing now? A study on the associations between recreational N2O use and subsequent drug use intentions.

Abstract

This study contributes to the existing literature about recreational nitrous oxide (N2O) use by focusing on the possible long-term effects for the users, that is on their substance use intentions for the subsequent year. Following the gateway theory, regular N2O use lowers barriers against other substance use. According to studies on the rural-urban continuum, living in more urban areas increases the risk to use more substances. In addition, prior research has shown older adolescents to have more drug-use intentions, and the perceived harmfulness of N2O could be a protective factor in future drug use intentions. The cross-sectional dataset ‘Drug Use Personas (DUP)’ with a sample of Dutch adolescents (N = 1189) was utilized to test these relations. Results showed that older adolescents, more frequent users, and those who lived in more urban areas had the intention to use more drugs in the subsequent year. N2O users who perceived the substance as more harmful had less intentions. The current results have important implications for practice and policy, as they provide substantiation to add N2O into the opium law. Future research should examine the causal direction of the found relationships and focus on finding measures that might decrease these relationships.