The social fabrics of their neighborhoods, including friendships and ideas about masculinity, have a powerful impact on marijuana use among young minority men, a new Yale School of Public Health study finds.
The research led by Tamara Taggart, Ph.D., MPH, a postdoctoral fellow at Yale’s Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS, discovered that strong social bonds between men may increase, rather than decrease, marijuana use, contrary to what was previously thought, and that men who believe in more traditional masculine gender roles—like men are supposed to be strong, successful, and not complain or show worry—are more likely to turn away from marijuana. These findings are published in American Journal on Men’s Health.
While marijuana use among adolescents in low-income neighborhoods has been widely studied, Taggart’s study breaks new ground in the examination of minority men in…