Study finds links to minority marijuana use

NEW HAVEN — Young black and Latino men who are members of close social networks and those who hold strong images of masculinity are more likely to use marijuana than other minority men, according to a study by a researcher at the Yale School of Public Health.

Those who live in rundown neighborhoods, such as those with a large amount of litter or graffiti or those prone to violence, are also more likely to be heavy users of marijuana, defined as smoking pot more than once a day, according to the study led by post-doctoral fellow Tamara Taggart.

“We’re talking about people who are using marijuana daily, regularly, multiple times a day, so that it interferes with their ability to engage in daily activity — marijuana as a coping mechanism as opposed to actually coping,” she said.

“We found a positive relationship: the more neighborhood problems, the more marijuana use.”

According to the study, “The chronic stress of residing in neighborhoods wrought with physical and social problems can lead to depression and anxiety and incite minority emerging adult males to use marijuana as an externalizing coping mechanism.”

Taggart, a fellow at Yale’s Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS, based her research on a survey by professor Trace Kershaw, called the Cell Phone Research to Enhance Wellness study, which looked at social networks, cellphone use and health-related behaviors by 119 minority men

from New Haven between ages 18 and 25. Kershaw is senior author on Taggart’s study.

Taggart said, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, “marijuana is high among this 18-25 population, and marijuana use is higher among men.” Marijuana is the most common drug used in that age group, more so even than alcohol, she said.

According to NIDA, the age group it defines as “emerging adult males” is more prone to dependence on the drug “and even more health and social consequences than their female counterparts,” Taggart said.

In the first study, “The goal was to see how the use of cellphone technology and social media among groups of friends … influences their decision-making about health and their related health behaviors,” including sexual behaviors and substance use, especially marijuana, Taggart said.

The researchers expected that if the study subjects “feel more connected to their neighborhood, they will have better health outcomes,” she said. “What’s interesting in our study is we found the opposite. Men who reported greater social cohesion reported more marijuana use.

“We need real structural level interventions … and community-based interventions that address the larger systemic issues within neighborhoods” outside the central city, Taggart said. “Men frequently talked about how there’s nothing in their neighborhood. Resources were pulled away and brought downtown.”

What’s needed are “interventions or programs that are both focused on men but (also) interventions that are focused on communities, building up the resources of communities,” Taggart said.

The next aspect the researchers studied was masculinity: “how a man is supposed to act,” which addresses issues of “toughness, status, anti-femininity,” Taggart said. “They believe that a man is tough, he’s strong, he doesn’t back down” from conflict.

The perception of masculinity also can be related to social status and behavior: The study subjects tend to believe that “men should be in jobs that make a lot of money. Men should not be engaged in activities that are considered feminine,” such as “crying, talking about your problems, working as a secretary,” Taggart said.

“Largely what we found was men’s endorsement of certain traditional masculine roles … decreased their engagement in marijuana use. … Men who are tough as nails were less likely to engage in marijuana use,” she said.

However, the conditions of their neighborhoods affected whether men who held anti-feminine attitudes used marijuana more. “More neighborhood problems were related to more days of marijuana use for men who have a lower endorsement of anti-femininity … compared to men with mean (average) and higher endorsement of anti-femininity,” the study, published in the American Journal on Men’s Health, reported.

According to the study, “Young men in disadvantaged neighborhoods who conform to masculine norms around status, toughness, and anti-femininity may also subscribe to masculinities promoting responsibility and accountability. … These men may have more motivation not to use marijuana to demonstrate their masculinities, as compared to those who do not endorse these norms.”

Taggart said one of the issues to be concerned about is, “We know black and Latino adults are more likely to experience negative health and social consequences of their use” of marijuana, including “incarceration, injury, conflict.”

She said legalizing recreational marijuana “isn’t going to mean much of anything. Whether it’s legalized or not to me it doesn’t change the issue … the issue of how laws are differently applied,” with minorities facing higher arrest and incarceration rates.

The study authors warned against overgeneralizing the findings. “This sample was drawn from a small, majority racial/ethnic minority, urban community with high rates of substance use and abuse,” it said. Also, “there are other factors associated with marijuana use that were not assessed in these analyses,” such as joblessness and anxiety, the paper said.

Taggart