Risky substance use among mixed-ethnic youth

Background: Substance use researchers have consistently examined racial and ethnic differences among young people, such as by comparing prevalence measures of white, Latine, and Indigenous youth. A paucity of research has examined use patterns among mixed ethnic youth, however. The goal of this research is to compare substance use and risky use patterns among mixed ethnic youth relative to others.

Methods: The data are from two large U.S. datasets: Health Behavior in School-Age Children (HBSC) and the Florida Substance Use Survey. Mixed ethnicity includes white-Black, white-Latine, Black-Latine, and several others. Multilevel negative binomial regression models with corrections for sample selection are used to estimate relative risks of daily tobacco use and heavy use of alcohol and marijuana.

Results: Analyses suggest that daily tobacco use is highest among white adolescents and similar among mixed ethnic white-Black and Black youth. On the other hand, the risk of heavy alcohol and marijuana use is higher for Black, white-Black, and white-Latine youth than among white youth. 

Conclusions: The rate of risky substance use among mixed ethnic youth appears to be most similar to use among those who share their minority status (e.g., white-black youth similar to black youth). This supports the "one-drop" model of racial/ethnic effects commonly used in the race/ethnicity literature: behaviors among mixed ethnic youth tend to be most like those who share their minority racial/ethnic identity.