Substance use disorders (SUDs) contribute to considerable morbidity and mortality, including premature mortality, infectious disease, and comorbid mental health conditions, as well as societal costs from lost productivity, health care costs, and crime (Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality, 2014; Bouchery et al., 2006; Degenhardt and Hall, 2012). These disorders are not distributed evenly across the population; instead, prevalence varies across age, and by gender and race/ethnicity. A new method, the time-varying effect model (TVEM) can be used to understand age-varying differences in SUDs, and to estimate periods at which health disparities are more pronounced. In this study, we used TVEM to estimate prevalence of four SUDs (alcohol use disorder, tobacco use disorder, cannabis/marijuana use disorder, and opioid use disorder) across ages 18–90 by gender and race/ethnicity in a nationally representative U.S. sample.
