Trends in alcohol, drug and cigarette use among Haitian youth in Miami-Dade county, Florida.
The objective of this article is to report on prevalence of drug and cigarette use among a segment of Haitian youth in the United States. The article is an argument in favor of contextualizing knowledge about drug use among young people across socioethnic lines. Because initiation of licit and illicit drugs tends to occur during adolescence, ethnic differentiation is crucial if we are to understand the drug experience among young people in the United States. Immigration, acculturation, and identity processes are critical in refuting the conventional racial categorization commonly used for interpretation of risks and behaviors among youth in the United States. The task of bringing empirical evidence to bear on drug use and drug choices by young people from different contexts will lead to the re-examination of patterns of drug use as well as to creative ways of conceptualizing these patterns.
Marcelin
Louis Herns
LH
Department of Anthropolgy and Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL 33124-2005, USA.
Vivian
James
J
DiClemente
Ralph
R
Shultz
James
J
Page
J Bryan
JB
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000437:Alcoholism / Q000208:ethnology; D002391:Catchment Area, Health; D005006:Ethnicity / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005260:Female; D005431:Florida / Q000453:epidemiology; D006205:Haiti / Q000208:ethnology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015995:Prevalence; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000208:ethnology*