Citation

Jones AA, Schneider KE, Brighthaupt SC, Johnson JK, Linton SL, Johnson RM. Drug Alcohol Depend. 2019; 205: e107664.

Affiliation

Department of Mental Health, Bloomberg School of Public Health, John Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA. Electronic address: rjohnson@jhu.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2019.107664

PMID

31707272

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Research on adolescent heroin use has focused on national surveillance, access, prevalence of use, and overdose deaths, however, to our knowledge, no study has examined local-level differences in the prevalence of adolescent heroin use in the context of nonmedical prescription opioid (NMPO) use. This study characterizes heroin and NMPO use among US high school students in select urban areas by sex and race/ethnicity.

METHODS: Data are from 21 urban school districts that participate in CDC's Local Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System. We describe 2017 prevalence estimates (and 95 % confidence intervals) of lifetime heroin and NMPO use among youth stratified by sex and race/ethnicity (i.e., White, Black, Hispanic/Latino).

RESULTS: The highest estimates of heroin use were in Baltimore, MD (7.6 %), Shelby County, TN (6.3 %), and Duval County, FL (6.1 %), whereas NMPO use was highest in Duval County, FL (18.1 %), Cleveland, OH (18.0 %), and Shelby County, TN (16.8 %). Heroin use was higher among boys than girls, especially among Hispanic/Latino boys in Duval County (12.3 %) and Black boys in Baltimore (10.9 %). NMPO use was highest among Hispanic/Latino girls (21.3 %) and White girls (19.9 %) in Duval County.

DISCUSSION: While some cities and subpopulations with high levels of adolescent heroin use also had elevated levels of NMPO use, others did not, illustrating the complexities of this opioid epidemic.

Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Language: en

Keywords

Adolescence; Gender; Heroin use; Opioids; Race/ethnicity; Surveillance