Substance Use and Delinquency Among Inner City Adolescent Males

This text identifies the characteristics that differentiate drug-involved youth from youth who have stayed away from drugs, and, incorporating suggestions from adolescents themselves, makes recommendations about how drug prevention and intervention efforts by schools, families, the media, and community organizations can be improved. The 1988 study is based on interviews by trained minority interviewers of 387 minority male adolescents of ninth and tenth grade age who lived in economically distressed sections of the District of Columbia. A major finding was that adolescents who sold but did not use drugs differ in important respects from users, whether or not they sell. The authors recommend that intervention strategies, be tailored to the different groups.