Black and Asian teenagers in the U.S. are less likely to use alcohol or drugs than adolescents of other races, a study found.
The survey of 72,561 teens found that American Indian youth had the highest level of drug or alcohol use, with 48 percent reporting they had used the substances in the past year. That was followed by 39 percent of whites, 37 percent of Hispanics, 36 percent mixed-race teens, 32 percent of blacks and 24 percent of Asians, according to the research published today in Archives of General Psychiatry.
The findings that black teens are less likely to drink or use drugs than whites may refute stereotypes and help programs “focus on the subgroups of adolescents who are at greater risk,” said study author Dan Blazer, a professor of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. Overall, 37 percent, or 27,705, of the teens in the study said they used alcohol or drugs in the past year, researchers said.
“This is a very real public health problem and all of us need to be concerned about it,” said Blazer, in a Nov. 4 telephone interview. “We need to be looking for it and we need to be trying to jump in to do what we can to get these kids into treatment and turn them around while they’re still adolescents.”
