Drug and alcohol use among youth in rural communities.

Characterizing variations in substance use by youth residing in rural areas is not a straightforward undertaking due in part to difficulties in defining rural, and in part to differences in community characteristics across whatever definition is used. The primary purpose of this chapter is to compare data on the prevalence of alcohol and other drug use by 8th and 12th graders across four sizes of communities, from very small rural to metropolitan. Community size classifications were based on Bureau of the Census county-level data and the Beale code (Lobao 1990) and include schools in counties that: (1) have populations of < 2,500; (2) are nonmetropolitan, nonadjacent (i.e., communities in counties with no city of 50,000 or more inhabitants and that are not integrated economically and socially with a population center of 50,000 or more in a nearby county); (3) are nonmetropolitan, adjacent (i.e., communities in counties with no city of 50,000 or more inhabitants but that are adjacent to a metropolitan county); and (4) are metropolitan counties. Community size contrasts are presented for drug use patterns by gender, perceived availability of substances and alcohol, and other drug-related problems.