‘A‘ole Drugs! Cultural Practices and Drug Resistance of Rural Hawai`ian Youths

Abstract

This qualitative study examined how Native Hawai`ian youths from rural communities utilized cultural practices to promote drug resistance and/or abstinence. Forty-seven students from five different middle schools participated in gender-specific focus groups that focused on the cultural and environmental contexts of drug use for Native Hawai`ian youths. The findings described culturally specific activities that participants used in drug-related problem situations. The findings also suggested that those youths with higher levels of enculturation were able to resist drugs more effectively than those youths who were disconnected from their culture. The implications of these findings for social work practice are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Hawai`ian
• youth
• drugs
• culture
• enculturation

This study was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Drug Abuse (K01 DA019884).

Notes

¹In NVivo, “coverage” refers to the amount of text in a transcript that is devoted to a specific code.