Patterns of tobacco product use and correlates among adults in the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study: A latent class analysis

Introduction As the tobacco industry and market evolves, there is a growing need to understand the patterns of use of tobacco products and how they relate to demographics, dependency, withdrawal, and quit behavior. Methods We analyzed data from wave 1 of the PATH Study consisting of 14856 individuals. Current users were defined as consuming at least 1 of 10 tobacco products. We performed a latent class analysis (LCA) to identify patterns of tobacco use. We used multinomial regression analysis to explore the association between these patterns with covariates representing socioeconomic status dependence/addiction, past quit attempts, and withdrawal severity. Results We identified four groups of current tobacco users with distinct profiles: (1) 61% of the sample were identified as cigarette-only users; (2) 9% were smokeless tobacco users; (3) 17% of the sample were characterized by being current users of all types of combustible tobacco including cigars, cigarillos, filtered cigars, and smoking a pipe (4) finally, 13% were e-cig and hookah users. All classes also shared a varying frequency of cigarette use. Exclusive cigarette users were more likely to be older and female, and experienced higher dependency and withdrawal. Users of e-cigs and hookah were the younger, most educated of all four subgroups, and presented the lowest dependency and withdrawal among the four groups. Conclusions FDA policy makers may want to discourage the use of tobacco products associated with higher tobacco dependency, and products that may contribute to experiencing higher levels of withdrawal symptoms by the user when trying to quit. Implications We identified four patterns of tobacco product use that are significantly related to demographic characteristics, dependency, and withdrawal. Policies should target users more likely to use tobacco products that increase dependency and withdrawal, making quitting more difficult.