NEIGHBORHOOD ENVIRONMENT AND OPPORTUNITY TO USE COCAINE AND OTHER DRUGS IN LATE CHILDHOOD AND EARLY ADOLESCENCE

We hypothesized that neighborhood disadvantage might function as a det erminant of 'exposure opportunity', an intermediate step on a path tow ard starting to use drugs illicitly. Testing this hypothesis, we analy zed self-report data gathered in 1992 by means of confidential intervi ews with 1416 urban-dwelling middle-school participants in a longitudi nal field study. Within this epidemiologic sample, 50 youths said that someone actively had offered them a chance to take cocaine or smoke c rack; tobacco had been offered to 395 youths; alcohol to 429 youths. U sing multiple logistic regression to hold constant grade, sex, minorit y status, and peer drug use, we found a moderately potent association between neighborhood disadvantage and exposure to cocaine: youths livi ng in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods (highest tertile) were an e stimated 5.6 times more likely to have been offered cocaine, as compar ed to those in relatively advantaged neighborhoods (P = 0.001). By com parison, there were weaker but statistically significant associations involving tobacco exposure opportunity (odds ratio, OR = 1.7, P = 0.00 4) and alcohol exposure opportunity (OR = 1.9, P = 0.0005). Future res earch will clarify the etiologic significance of neighborhood disadvan tage in pathways leading toward illicit drug use.