Abstract
Background and Aims: Families who live in a disadvantaged socioeconomic situation frequently face substandard housing, unsafe neighborhoods, inadequate schools and more stress in their daily lives than more affluent families, with a host of psychological and developmental consequences that can hinder their children’s development in many ways. However, the measurement of socioeconomic status among youth and its link with different forms of illicit substance use is challenging and still unclear. This paper extends existing research on the relationship between socioeconomic status and illicit drug use among adolescents by focusing on three different patterns of use (experimental, episodic and frequent) and making use of two indicators to improve the measurement of individual socioeconomic characteristics in a big sample of European students. Methods: Data were drawn from the European school Survey Project on Alcohol and other Drugs (ESPAD), which, since 1995, collects comparable data among 15-to-16-year-old students to monitor trends in drug use and other risk behaviors across Europe. The sample comes from 28 countries that participated in the 2015 data collection. The consumption of cannabis, cocaine and heroin are considered, and the related patterns are identified based on the frequency of use. Family characteristics at student level are defined through two dimensions: parental educational level and perceived socioeconomic status. Multivariate multilevel mixed-effects logistic regression was performed in order to measure the association between individual characteristics and vulnerability for drug use. Results: Some patterns of use, episodic and frequent in particular, were found strongly associated with a lower socioeconomic status and lower parental education. Conclusions: Our results suggest that drug policies should be combined with actions aimed at removing barriers to social inclusion that are attributable to the socioeconomic background of adolescents.
Highlights
Childhood socioeconomic status and school failure have been found to predict drug use in youth and young adults [1], suggesting an association between childhood social disadvantages and later use of psychoactive drugs, primarily cannabis [2,3,4,5]. In line with these findings, recent evidence has indicated that minorities with lower socioeconomic status had higher prevalence of lifetime use of marijuana, and higher incidence of past year initiation compared with affluent social groups in the population [6,7]
In line with previous studies on the association between social factors and drug abuse among students, our results suggest that some patterns of use, episodic and frequent in particular, In line with previous studies on the association between social factors and drug abuse among are associated with a lower socioeconomic status and lower parental education
This paper shows that many patterns of use among adolescents are associated with a lower socioeconomic status and lower parental education
Summary
Childhood socioeconomic status and school failure have been found to predict drug use in youth and young adults [1], suggesting an association between childhood social disadvantages and later use of psychoactive drugs, primarily cannabis [2,3,4,5]. In line with these findings, recent evidence has indicated that minorities with lower socioeconomic status had higher prevalence of lifetime use of marijuana, and higher incidence of past year initiation compared with affluent social groups in the population [6,7]. Conclusions: Our results suggest that drug policies should be combined with actions aimed at removing barriers to social inclusion that are attributable to the socioeconomic background of adolescents
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