Ethnicity and race in drug and alcohol research

Abstract

This article reviews the (predominantly American) research literature on the ethnic and ‘racial’ aspects of drug and alcohol use over the last thirty years. The main conclusion to emerge from this review is a substantial disjuncture between theory and practice. Over the last twenty years there has been a sustained theoretical critique of approaches which utilize broad ethnic and ‘racial’ categories as the basis of epidemiological comparison, and this critique has apparently been effective in the sense that few, if any, researchers would dispute its essential arguments. Nevertheless, the dominant empirical mode of research in the field is one which continues to employ these (theoretically) discredited categories. Two arguments are offered to explain this contradiction. The first is that the critique of what I label categorical positivism in this field has itself been impoverished by inadequate theoretical approaches to the concepts of ethnicity and race. Secondly, the USA is a deeply racialised society and the ‘war on drugs’ reflects this in very fundamental ways. It is not surprising that the social epidemiology of drug and alcohol use is deeply affected by the racialisation of the society which produces it.

Key Words:

• Sociology
• drugs
• ethnicity
• race
• racism
• enforcement