As seen in Figure 1, a linear relationship between alcohol consumption and AD was observed in males, with each 20% incremental increase in heaviness of use corresponding to approximately a 10% increase in rates of AD. By contrast, rates of AD in women increased dramatically from the 60th to 80th percentile and from the 80th percentile to the highest consumption levels (see Figure 2). Although overall prevalence of AD in women was half that of men (17.7% vs. 34.4%), the prevalence of AD in the heaviest drinking females was considerably higher than in the heaviest drinking males (58.1% vs. 39.9%). The association between frequency of cannabis use and cannabis dependence in women paralleled the association in males (see Figure 2). The prevalence of cannabis dependence was very low (0 – 6.9%) for individuals in the low to average frequency use groups (i.e., fewer than 13 times for females and fewer than 51 times for males), but rates of cannabis dependence rose substantially as use increased to moderately high (15.4% and 38.8% for females and males, respectively) and again to the highest frequency of use, at which 58.7% of females and 65.5% met full cannabis dependence criteria.
