Substance use in high school students in New South Wales, Australia, in relation to language spoken at home

Purpose: To examine for the first time adolescent substance use by ethnicit y, given the high proportion of migrants from non-English-speaking countrie s in New South Wales, (NSW), Australia. Methods: Data from four surveys of NSW secondary school students in 1983, 1 986, 1989, and 1992 were used for this analysis. The prevalence of substanc e use by whether English was spoken at home was stratified by sex and age u sing data from the most recent survey year. Adjusted odds ratios and 95% co nfidence intervals were produced by simultaneous logistic regression, adjus ting for sex, age group, and the interaction term of sex and age for each o f these substances, and for each survey year separately. Data from 1989 and 1992 were pooled together to examine rates of substance use by ethnic subg roups which reflect migration patterns. Results: The prevalence of smoking and alcohol and illicit drug use was con sistently lower among NSW adolescents speaking a language other than Englis h at home, compared with those speaking English at home in all survey years ,Only the prevalence of solvent sniffing was higher among younger adolescen ts speaking a language other than English at home. Students from South-east Asia showed consistently lower rates of usage of all substances compared t o all other groups. Conclusions: There may be different opportunities for the prevention of ado lescent substance use among native English speakers to be gained from non-E nglish-speaking cultures. (C) Society for Adolescent Medicine, 1999.