Legal drug use in a general population: association with gender, morbidity, health care utilization, and lifestyle characteristics.

Legal drug use was assessed by a questionnaire to 15,986 men and women participating in the Finnmark Health Survey 1987-1988. Logistic regression analysis was used to quantify the relationships between legal drug use and gender, morbidity, utilization of health services, and lifestyle and sociodemographic characteristics. Drug use was higher in women than men, but the gender difference decreased with age. Women used more drug groups than men, and the gender difference increased with number of drugs used. Participating in outdoor activities was associated with lower use of drugs in both men and women. The data support the notion that alcohol use plays a more important role in the prediction of drug use in men compared with women. A significant gender difference in the consumption of legal drugs do persist after adjusting for co-morbidity and utilization of health services. Overall, this analysis shows that drug use depends on need (morbidity), followed by use of health services and lifestyle. Sociodemographic variables were shown to have minor influence.