Cultural Adjustment and Hispanic Adolescent Drug Use

Abstract

Perhaps no single issue in the drug field is more illuminating and enigmatic than the relationship between culture and drug use. Epidemiological surveys in Latin America have consistently shown very low levels of adolescent drug use, even in countries that are primary producers and exporters of illicit drugs. The contrast of endemic American drug use and minimal use in Latin America points to the importance of investigating social and cultural factors to explain variations in drug use in the United States. There is something about American society that engenders experimentation and addiction at a much higher rate than experienced in other nations. Despite the obvious importance of this information for research and public policy, almost nothing has been done to systematically address this issue. One of the most obvious ways to search for answers is by investigating the effects of cultural adjustment on drug use among Hispanic adolescents. Hispanic adolescents are an appropriate group for examining the culturedrug use relationship because they are coming from an ethnic group that has strong prohibitions against illicit drug use, they are highly familistic (Vega, 1990), and the population is heterogeneous, since it includes recent immigrants and families with multiple generations in the United States (Zimmerman et al., 1994). Therefore, we can anticipate a wide range of adherence to traditional cultural practices and behaviors that moderate drug-using behavior. There are two basic conceptual approaches pertinent to linking cultural adjustment to contemporary social psychological theories about drug use. These concepts are acculturation and acculturative stress (Berry, Poortinga, Segall, & Dasen, 1995; Triandis, 1994). Acculturation refers to the process of gaining new cultural information and either retaining or losing specific aspects of one’s culture of origin (i.e., deculturation). Acculturative stress is a by-product of acculturation that is specific to personal exposures to