Environmental Setting and Early Drug Involvement among Inner-City Junior High School Youths

Abstract

This study explores the drug use of a sample of inner-city junior high school youths by examining a hypothesized, interactive relationship between perceived toughness/drug use in their neighborhood and the youths' demographic, neighborhood orientation/involvement, and drug use context factors in regard to their involvement with drugs. The results dramatically showed that the youths' views of their environmental setting operate as a conditioning factor in understanding the correlates of their drug involvement. In supporting the hypothesis, prosocial correlates of drug use are stressed in settings characterized by high toughness/drug use settings. Our findings urge that serious consideration be given to examining social contextual effects on drug taking as a means to understanding this behavior among different sociocultural groups.