title: Environmental setting and early drug involvement among inner-city junior high school youths.
abstract: This study explores the drug use of a sample of inner-city junior high school youths by examining a hypothesized, interactive relationship between perceived toughness/drug use in their neighborhood and the youths' demographic, neighborhood orientation/involvement, and drug use context factors in regard to their involvement with drugs. The results dramatically showed that the youths' views of their environmental setting operate as a conditioning factor in understanding the correlates of their drug involvement. In supporting the hypothesis, prosocial correlates of drug use are stressed in settings characterized by high toughness/drug use settings. Our findings urge that serious consideration be given to examining social contextual effects on drug taking as a means to understanding this behavior among different sociocultural groups.
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D013287:Illicit Drugs; D008297:Male; D009519:New York City; D010379:Peer Group; D010553:Personality Development; D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations; D012931:Social Environment; D012932:Social Facilitation; D012933:Social Identification; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D014505:Urban Population
chemical_list: D013287:Illicit Drugs; D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations