Prospective participants were recruited (1) in-person by distributing flyers, (2) posting flyers with tear-off tabs, (3) social media, and (4) by emailing an announcement that described the study aims and procedures to organizations and individuals who may have had access to the target sample. It should be noted that at each respective study site most participants who were not current college students were recruited in-person by research personnel with experience in recruiting Hispanic participants for research studies. As America’s Hispanic community grows larger and more diverse, meeting these needs will contribute significantly to the country’s overall health and wellbeing.

Social Consequences

Bivariate correlations between study variables were assessed using a Pearson correlation coefficient. In a study of Latin Americans and alcohol, women who chose surveys in English over Spanish were twice as likely to drink. Latino Americans’ alcohol consumption rates have changed over time and are more similar to U.S. rates.

Alcoholism: A Rising Health Crisis for Latinos

A CDC group studied the language preference for a health interview as a predictor of alcohol consumption patterns among Hispanic adults in the United States. It can lead to a wide range of possible hazards and issues, including increasing the odds for addiction. The study used a household probability sample of adult Hispanics in five metropolitan areas in the United States. The overall treatment program for an alcohol use disorder as specified by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) would not vary substantially. According to a joint effort produced by SAMHSA and the Centers for Substance Abuse Treatment, it should include some specific considerations. 51.1% of Puerto Rican women in the U.S. who drink participate in binge drinking, the highest among any Hispanic group by far.

1. Beta coefficients and corresponding standard errors were extracted into a matrix and were analyzed with PROC MIANALYZE in SAS to arrive at the final results.
2. Hence, an interaction term representing a 4-level variable was included in the regression models.
3. First, our study findings indicate that the US Hispanic population is not homogeneous concerning alcohol consumption.
4. In contrast, death rates for White non-Hispanic and Black Hispanic males and females were lower than overall rates for each gender.
5. Compared to other racial/ethnic groups, Hispanic (inclusive of Latinos, Latinas, and Latinx) emerging adults had the second-highest prevalence of current alcohol use (50.1%), binge drinking (32.9%), and heavy drinking (8.0%), and the third-highest prevalence of alcohol use disorder (10.7%; SAMHSA, 2018).

Addiction

Though What are the treatments for heroin use disorder National Institute on Drug Abuse NIDA research and awareness about mental health and substance use in the Latinx community is increasing, more still needs to be done. The 2020 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) found that 12.7% of Hispanic or Latinx people ages 12 and older, or 6.2 million people, had a substance use disorder (SUD). Nearly 10% of Latinos need substance use disorder treatment compared to closer to 9% of the general population, research shows. Not all Hispanic groups are equal when it comes to drinking and alcohol-related problems, according to an expert who has been studying the alcohol pattern in Latinos for many years. Descriptive statistics including means, standard deviations were generated for all continuous variables and frequencies and proportions were generated for all categorical variables. Univariate comparisons of the mentioned variables by study site were carried out with the chi-square test for categorical variables, and a t-test for continuous variables.

As with most of the roads that lead to a substance use issue, there are dozens of potential risk factors at play that, in the right balance and combination, can determine why one acculturated immigrant may develop a substance abuse problem and why another may not. Across ethnic groups, most drinking drivers killed were male, although the proportion of female drivers who were intoxicated among fatally injured drivers was highest (i.e., more than 40 percent) for Native Americans. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (2009b) statistics on alcohol-related motor vehicle crash deaths also point to an important subgroup difference for Asians. In 2006, the overall death rate among Asians (1.8 per 100,000 people) obscured the death rate among Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders (5.9), which was less than the rate for Native Americans but similar to that for Hispanics (14.5 and 5.2, respectively).

Binge drinking and alcohol consumption without binge drinking among pregnant women were highest in Whites (21.1 percent and 45.0 percent, respectively) compared with other ethnic groups (0 percent to 10.7 percent and 21.0 percent to 37.3 percent). However, other studies found that Black, Hispanic, and Asian women were less likely to reduce or quit heavy drinking after becoming pregnant (Morris et al. 2008; Tenkku et al. 2009). Blacks and Native Americans are at greater risk than Whites for FAS and fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (Russo et al. 2004). From 1995 to 1997, FAS rates averaged 0.4 per 1,000 live births across data-collection sites for the Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Surveillance Network and were highest for Black (1.1 percent) and Native American (3.2 percent) populations (CDC 2002). This article identifies U.S. ethnic-group differences in alcohol- attributed social and health-related harms.

Breakdown Of Drinking Trends Among Latino Americans

Research has shown differential social and health effects from alcohol use across U.S. ethnic groups, including Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans. The relationship of ethnicity to alcohol-related social and health harms partially is attributed to the different rates and patterns of drinking across ethnicities. Some ethnic groups have higher rates of alcohol consumption, putting them at greater risk of drinking harms. However, other ethnic minorities experience health harms from drinking that are disproportionate to their consumption. Differences in social and socioeconomic factors and biological differences related to alcohol metabolism also could contribute to alcohol’s varying effects across populations.