The Social Context of Substance Use and Perceived Risk among Rhode Island Urban Minority Adolescents.

Our qualitative study examined how stresses of daily life affected substance use and perceived risk among Black and Hispanic adolescents. We conducted 11 focus groups with students aged 13-25 in public and alternative schools in Providence, Rhode Island, using Bourdieu's Social Practice theoretical approach to guide questioning and data analysis. Despite participants' frequent marijuana use, they perceived the emphasis society places on substance use as misguided, obfuscating the persistence of more critical problems such as stress and reduced opportunity resulting from neighborhood violence, poor schools, financial difficulties, and home troubles. Drug use appeared not to be a catalyst but a response. Our findings underscore the need for prevention strategies to address systemic racism and structural conditions limiting opportunities in young people's lives. Planners should explore adolescents' pragmatic decision-making contexts and ways that social, health, and community resources can together contribute to conditions where adolescents have opportunities to make healthful choices.