Race, Ethnic Drug Use, and Delinquency in Public Schools among High School 12th Graders

Abstract

Research has shown a strong correlation between drug use and delinquency. In addition, research has also shown that drug use tends to peak in late adolescence and the onset of early adulthood. Consequently, the high school years, especially, the 12^th grade is an important transition in the life course of delinquents. This study used descriptive statistics to compare drug use among Black, White, and Hispanic 12^th grade high school students, and Spearman’s correlation to find which drugs have the strongest correlation to delinquency. The data for this study was downloaded from Monitoring the Future (MTF, 2007). The Null Hypothesis is that Blacks use more drugs than both Whites and Hispanics; hence they are more involved in delinquency than both Whites and Hispanics. The drugs analyzed in this study are: alcohol, marijuana, crack, cocaine, narcotics, LSD, and heroin.