Families, Schools and Drug-using Peers: what roles do they play in frequent youth alcohol, marijuana and cigarette use?

Abstract

Using an integrated theoretical model of tenets from Social Control and Differential Association theories, this thesis explores the roles of prosocial attachments to family and school, and the role of drug-using peers in pathways to frequent youth alcohol, marijuana and cigarette use. This research used an extended dataset from the Raising Healthy Children study from when participants were 18 years old and a sub-sample of 494. Ordered logistic regression analyses revealed that school attachments are critical in protecting youth from engaging in more frequent drug use, however exposure to pro-drug definitions through associating with drug-using peers complicates this. Having peers who used drugs was the most significant predictor across all models where marijuana-using peers especially, increased likelihood of engaging in more frequent use of each drug. Findings highlight the value for policy and intervention targeting adolescent drug behaviours to be implemented within the school. Although family attachments did not play as important a role in influencing youth drug use frequency, the power that families have in strengthening youth school attachments should not be underestimated when considering implications of this research. Therefore, reflective of the integrated model, this research recognises that efforts in reducing youth frequent drug use should be collectively targeted towards all three social environments.