Religiosity as mediator for association between Antisocial Traits with Drug use: results of large data set analysis in Iran

The present study examined three hypotheses to determine whether antisocial traits and religiosity play a moderating or mediating role in drug use. The study represents a secondary analysis of data derived from the national survey “Surveillance System for Social Deviances and Their Determinants (SSSDD),” which was conducted in 2019 in Iran. A total of 127,253 individuals aged 15–60 years old from all 31 provinces in Iran were included in this study. We used logistic regression to demonstrate the relationship between antisocial traits and religiosity with drug use. Then we formally investigated the possible mediating or moderating role of religiosity and antisocial traits analogously using path analyses. Results indicated that low religiosity and high antisocial traits were strongly associated with drug use (p < 0.001). The odds of drug use for persons with low and moderate religiosity were about 9 and 3.2 times of persons with high religiosity and the odds of drug use for persons with high and moderate antisocial traits were about 2 and 1.5 times of persons with low antisocial traits, respectively. Results from the path analyses suggest that religiosity is an important protective factor against drug use and mediates the relationship between antisocial traits and drug use.