Initiation of alcohol, marijuana, and inhalant use by American-Indian and white youth living on or near reservations

Abstract

Background Early initiation of drinking, intoxication, marijuana, and inhalant use is associated with negative outcomes and substance use trajectories. Using national datasets, American Indian (AI) youth have been found to initiate substance use earlier than other youth. This study uses a population-based sample of youth living on or near reservations to compare substance use onset for AI and white youth where socioeconomic conditions may be similar for these youth. Methods Student survey data were gathered from 32 schools in 3 regions from 2009-2012. A retrospective person-period data set was constructed using reported age of initiation of intoxication and marijuana and inhalant use. Multi-level modeling and event history analysis were used to estimate initiation as a function of age, gender, ethnicity, and region. Results The results provide further evidence that AI youth living on or near reservations initiate substance use significantly earlier than white youth who attend the same schools and live in the same communities. Differences between the two cultural groups were most evident for marijuana initiation where the odds of initiating marijuana use ranged from seven to 10 times greater for nine vs. eight-year-old AI compared to white youth. Conclusions Prevention efforts targeted to AI youth must begin earlier than for non-AI youth in order to delay or prevent initiation. In addition, better understanding about the differences in the psychosocial environments of AI and white youth living in these communities is of paramount importance in designing prevention efforts.

An Examination of the Ethnicity-Specific Prevalence of and Factors Associated with Substance Use and Misuse: Cross-Sectional Analysis of Croatian and Bosniak Adolescents in Bosnia and Herzegovina

“…The studies conducted thus far fairly consistently show ethnic differences in certain SUM templates, but there is an evident lack of investigations that examined the ethnicity-specific prevalence and correlates of SUM in European countries [17,18,19,20]. Also, in European studies authors mostly compared one-specific ethnic group to another heterogeneous group which included several different ethnicities [17,18].…”

“…For example, a Slovak study compared Roma and non-Roma adolescents, and reported lower prevalence of drunkenness among Roma adolescents [17], while a study from The Netherlands compared Dutch students with their ethnic-minority peers, and found lower prevalence of alcohol drinking among ethnic-minority groups [18]. Additionally, it is generally known the ethnic differences actually extrapolate the differences in socioeconomic status (SES) and scholastic status (i.e., differences in the availability of education, differences in the quality of the education system), which consequently result in different SUM templates between studied ethnicities [17,19,21]. …”

Substance Use Profiles of Urban American Indian Adolescents: A Latent Class Analysis

“…AI adolescents engage in substance use at higher rates and earlier ages than their non-AI peers (Beauvais, Jumper-Thurman, & Burnside, 2008;Dixon et al, 2007; De Ravello, Everett Jones, Tulloch, Taylor, & Doshi, 2014; Miller, Beauvais, Burnside, & Jumper-Thurman, 2008; Stanley, Harness, Swaim, & Beauvais, 2014; Stanley & Swaim, 2015; Swaim, 2015) and experience more negative consequences of substance use that compromise their social, economic, and physical wellbeing (Indian Health Service, 2013; Keyes et al, 2012; Schinke, Tepavac, & Cole, 2000). Data from the 2007 to 2009 national Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) indicate that when compared to white adolescents, AI youth are significantly more likely to drink alcohol before age 13 (AI=29.3%; white=19.6%), and to use marijuana (AI=43.9%; white=36.8%), cocaine (AI=9.4%; white=6.8%), and inhalants (AI=18.7%; white=12.8%) in their lifetime (De Ravello et al, 2014).…”

Multivariate family factors in lifetime and current marijuana use among American Indian and white adolescents residing on or near reservations

“…Heavy use of marijuana is associated with numerous negative outcomes including neurocognitive deficits (Bolla et al, 2002), reduced affective response (Gruber et al, 2009), lowered task performance associated with reduced motivation (Lane et al, 2005), and a variety of psychosocial problems including school dropout, unemployment, and increased risk for delinquency (Fergusson et al, 2008; Green et al, 2010; Lynskey and Hall, 2000). This raises serious public health concerns regarding the substance use trajectories of AI youth, especially considering their early initiation of marijuana use (Stanley and Swaim, 2015; Whitesell et al, 2012). While various risk factors for substance use have been identified for the general population of adolescents (Hawkins et al, 1992), there is evidence that family factors may be especially important in relation to indigenous youth in general (Calabria et al, 2013) and AI youth in particular (LaFromboise et al, 2006; Swaim et al, 1993).…”