School dropout and injecting drug use in a national sample of white non-Hispanic American adults

In this study we sought to extend our previous finding of an association be tween school dropout and injecting drug use (IDU) among African Americans b y testing the association in a sample of White non-Hispanic Americans. A na tionally representative sample of White non-Hispanic Americans age eighteen years and older was drawn from public use data files of the 1995-1996 Nati onal Household Surveys on Drug Abuse (NHSDA). Adults with a self-report his tory of IDU were identified, and were matched to non-IDU adults in the same neighborhoods of residence. Conditional logistic regression was used to es timate the association between dropping out of high school and the occurren ce of IDU. White non-Hispanic American high school dropouts were more likel y than high school graduates to have injected a drug at least once. The fin dings of this research on non-Hispanic Whites are generally consistent with our earlier evidence on the association between educational status and a h istory of IDU among African-American adults. School dropout prevention prog rams may merit attention in an overall strategy of preventing injecting dru g use and HIV/AIDS.