Use of illegal drugs among mothers across racial/ethnic groups in the United States: a multi-level analysis of individual and community level influences.

OBJECTIVE: To obtain adjusted one-year prevalence estimates and compare multi-level correlates of marijuana, cocaine, crack, or heroin use among 4,678 mothers of minor children in the United States across racial/ethnic populations.
METHODS: The study used publicly available data from the 1997 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse. Hierarchical generalized linear modeling (HGLM) procedures were used to test drug use variation among non-Hispanic White, non-Hispanic Black, and Hispanic mothers across US neighborhoods.
RESULTS: Black mothers were 40% less likely to use illegal drugs than were White mothers, and Hispanic mothers were 72% less likely than were White mothers to use drugs, after adjusting for demographic and community covariates. Drug use was found to vary across neighborhoods for all racial/ethnic groups. This study identified a positive association between the likelihood of mothers using illegal drugs and their living in neighborhoods with a higher occurrence of drug use.
CONCLUSION: To compare drug use across racial/ethnic groups, it is necessary to account for the confounding effects of covariates. Additional research is needed to determine whether non-drug using mothers chose to live in neighborhoods with a lower concentration of drug use, whether residence in these neighborhoods decreases the likelihood of mothers using drugs, or if a reciprocal relationship exists. The mechanisms that link individual drug use and neighborhood characteristics merit further investigation.