RACIAL/ETHNIC DIFFERENCES IN RELIGIOSITY AND DRUG USE

While research on religion and drug use has proliferated in recent years, only a few researchers have explicitly examined the nexus of race, religion, and illicit drug use. Utilizing an ethnically diverse sample of young adults in South Florida (N=1772), we find that Whites are more likely to use illicit drugs than African Americans, non-Cuban Hispanics, and Cuban Hispanics, and Whites are also less likely to attend religious services and self-identify as religious than other racial/ethnic groups. Multivariate analyses indicate that religious attendance is a significant deterrent of drug use for all racial/ethnic groups, but the protective effect of religion is significantly greater for Whites and Hispanics than for African Americans. In the end, while differences in drug use between Hispanic and White adolescents in our study are reduced to non-significance with the inclusion of religious measures, black-white differences in drug use, though diminished, remain significant.