A Randomized Clinical Trial of Mobile Contingency Management Intervention for Cannabis Use Reduction

Abstract

Cannabis use problems are on the rise in the USA, and there is a significant need for novel approaches to increase heavy cannabis users’ access to evidence-based treatment. The objective of this randomized clinical trial (RCT) was to evaluate the efficacy of mobile contingency management (mCM) to reduce cannabis use among individuals with heavy cannabis use. Participants completed 2 weeks of daily ecological momentary assessments and twice daily video saliva tests during a baseline ad lib cannabis use period. Participants randomly assigned to mCM then received 6 weeks of the mCM intervention, whereas control participants received non-contingent payments. Consistent with our main hypothesis, participants in the mCM condition reported significantly greater reductions in bioverified use days (43.1% reduction vs 1.3% reduction) and self-reported grams used (80.9% reduction vs 5.1% reduction). This RCT provides the strongest evidence to date that mCM is effective at reducing cannabis use among heavy cannabis users.