Drug use among Puerto Rican youth: An exploration of generational status differences

Abstract

An analysis of the relationship between generational status, or migrational experience, and adolescent drug use takes advantage of a natural experiment—the migration of Puerto Ricans to the continental United States and their immigration back to the island. Although researchers have studied different sources of variation in adolescent drug use behavior, few have examined the drug use experience of the same ethnic group in varying sociocultural settings. The present study focussed on the drug use involvement of four generational status groups of Puerto Rican adolescents in two different settings—New York City and San Juan, Puerto Rico. The groups surveyed in New York City were: New York Ricans (New York City-born Puerto Ricans) and New York migrants (island-born Puerto Rican adolescents). The two groups identified in Puerto Rico were: Puerto Rican islanders (adolescents who had never lived outside of Puerto Rico) and Puerto Rican immigrants (New York City-born youngsters of Puerto Rican parentage whose families had returned to live on the island). In this study, it was hypothesized that the more the perceived environment dimensions of the different generational status groups have characteristics conductive to drug use, the greater the drug use involvement of the groups will be. The analysis confirmed that the drug use involvement of the four groups of Puerto Rican adolescents paralleled the exposure of the groups to a host society, New York City, which has a higher prevalence of adolescent drug use than the culture of origin, Puerto Rico. In addition, it was found that the longer New York migrants lived in New York City, the greater was their drug use involvement. The roles of various other sociodemographic factors (i.e. gender, grade level, family structure and socioeconomic status) in relation to adolescent drug use were also investigated. Two important conditional relationships were documented. First, the impact of length of time living in New York City varied with the adolescent's gender, with higher risk of drug involvement observed for female migrants. Second, socioeconomic status was associated with Puerto Rican adolescents' drug use involvement in the New York City subgroups, but not among the students in Puerto Rico.