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Drug use among men by sexual behaviour, race and ethnicity: Prevalence estimates from a nationally representative US sample

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2016.01.008Get rights and content

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Background

In addition to men who have sex with men (MSM) reporting greater drug use compared with non-MSM (McCabe, Hughes, Bostwick, West, & Boyd, 2009), there are also drug use differences between racial and ethnic groups among all men (Cooper, Friedman, Tempalski, Friedman, & Keem, 2005). It is important to consider these characteristics jointly within a framework that acknowledges simultaneous dimensions of minority stress, including racial, ethnic, and sexual discrimination. The minority stress model

Methods

The source population for this study was the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC), a longitudinal survey conducted between 2001–2002 (wave #1) and 2004–2005 (wave #2) designed to measure alcohol, tobacco, and drug use in the civilian, non-institutionalized US population 18 years of age and older (Grant & Kaplan, 2005). As sexual behaviour was only assessed in the second wave of NESARC, the study population included all male respondents in wave #2, a subset of

Results

Among 13,773 eligible men in the second wave of NESARC, 617 (4%) reported MSM behaviour, which did not vary by race and ethnicity. The majority of the sample were non-Hispanic white men (76%), with the remainder approximately equally distributed among non-Hispanic black (11%) and Hispanic or Latino (13%) men. Prevalence proportions, counts and 95% confidence intervals of self-reported drug use are given in Table 1.

Among all men in NESARC, prevalence of drug use was greater for MSM compared with

Discussion

In this descriptive epidemiological analysis, we evoked intersectionality as a framework for identifying drug use differences by race and ethnicity among MSM, using example data from a nationally represented sample of men in the US. Race and ethnicity were found to have a contributory, independent effects on drug use with respect to sexual behaviour. While age influenced the prevalence of drug use, this appeared to be independent of having male sexual partners.

Compared to non-MSM, drug use was

Conflict of Interest statement

No conflict declared.

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