The Influence of Family, School, and Peers on Adolescent Drug Misuse

The socializing impact of the family is compared to that of peers during adolescent progressive involvement with drugs. This longitudinal study replicates in the school population of Madrid the work of Kandel and associates in the state of New York in an attempt to verify the "stepping-stone" hypothesis. Although the Madrid study detected a sequence of drug use similar to that in the New York study, the Spanish study hypothesized tobacco use to be the first stage and alcohol use the second. Cultural traits explain the different findings of these studies, especially those concerning the preventive role of the mother-child bond among Spanish adolescents.