Book Summary: Break the Cycle of Children’s Environmental Health Disparities (or simply, Break the Cycle) is an annual collaborative interdisciplinary research and training program involving university students in academic tracks that focus on the impact of adverse social, economic, and environmental factors on children’s health, development, and education. The target populations are communities where environmental hazards are related to circumstances of social and economic disadvantage. Each student develops a project that focuses on preventing or reducing adverse environmental factors to benefit the children who live in these communities. At the end of the project, the students present their studies and findings at a national conference and write papers which are then published. This book is the result of the 12th annual Break the Cycle program. The projects cover a range of factors that operate over a period of time and have an influence on individual, community, and social perspectives. Most importantly, they inform us about children’s environmental health disparities and propose solutions to reduce health disparities in order to promote health equity for all children.

The purpose of this paper was to examine how people experience the practice of Cannabis in daily life. The study was based on interviews with five individuals who have experience with cannabis use. They do not represent a bigger population only themselves. We chose these particular individuals because all of them began using cannabis at a young age- everyone before they were twenty. But they have been using cannabis because of different reasons. The results of the interviews were analyzed with the thesis of Howard Becker and the new developed thesis of Hallstone about social control. The thesis explains the pattern of becoming a drug addict and what the steps are. The final results of this study contain answers about how much cannabis they have been using, how often, with whom and with what purpose. We compared these answers to the patterns to see if there was any truth to them and then we explained the function the drug has in their lives. For further explaining we used former researches about cannabis use in different areas of life. In the discussion we try to understand what these answers mean, what the thought behind cannabis use is and if these people really have the control over it.

Alcohol abuse and illicit drug use in the United States are major concerns of American households, as well as of the White House. This dissertation research evaluates alcohol abuse and controlled drug use by American workers in the context of various individual, organizational, and occupational settings. It tests the importation and organizational stress perspectives, the occupation subculture perspective, and the lifecycle wage compensation theory. The analyses are developed utilizing (1) logistic regression, (2) generalized linear modeling, including Poisson regression and negative binomial regression, (3) weighted modeling estimation, taking the clustering effects of complex survey design into account, and (4) the hierarchical growth curve modeling of intra- and inter-individual differences. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979—1993, the 1997 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, and the 1998 National Occupational Information Network (O*NET 98), I find that employees' drinking and controlled drug use behavior are predicted by a number of individual background characteristics, as well as workplace-environment variables. I also find that occupational characteristics influence alcohol and drug using behaviors of workers, although in more complex ways than suggested by much of the organizational stress and occupational subculture literature. It appears that occupations with higher levels of steady employment prospects exert the most significant negative effect on employees' alcohol use, marijuana use, and any illicit drug use, regardless of an employee's age, gender, race, education, and income. It also appears that the etiology of cocaine use is different from that of either alcohol use or other drugs, such as marijuana. Finally, I find that when education and years employed are held constant, employees' current marijuana use is negatively associated with their earnings. No evidence has been found that current alcohol use, current marijuana use, or lifetime cocaine use predicts future growth rates on earnings. Having examined the factors of occupational, organizational, and individual social/demographic characteristics as they influence patterns of alcohol abuse and controlled drug use in multiple large representative samples of the labor force, discussions on the research findings, the implications, the limitations, and the future study directions are presented. / Ph. D.

This dissertation explores the criminalization of hypodermic syringes as drug paraphernalia specifically in relation to the extent to which criminalization may impact individual’s connection with harm reduction services, implementation of harm reduction strategies, and healthcare. I utilize a critical criminological perspective to identify and explore the ways in which criminalization works to perpetuate and reinforce the marginalized status of and control and constrain the lives of people who inject drugs. I conducted secondary data analysis of interviews with twenty-five people who inject drugs in rural southern Illinois to explore the extent to which criminalization impacts accessibility and engagement with needed harm reduction and health services and identify the mechanisms through which this impact is enacted. Participants were asked to describe their knowledge of state laws and polices related to drug paraphernalia and calling emergency services in the event of witnessing an overdose. Lastly, this dissertation examined how people who inject drugs cope with their experiences with law enforcement. Findings illustrate that criminalization constricts accessibility and engagement with harm reduction and healthcare services among rural people who inject drugs through frequent violent encounters with law enforcement in which participants are routinely degraded, harassed, and abused. These encounters, coupled with pervasive community stigma, lock participants into a hyper-stigmatized master status further interrupting access and engagement with harm reduction and health services and diminishing networks of social support. Additionally, participants reported a lack of confidence in their understanding of state laws and policies related to paraphernalia and calling emergency services during overdose events; and, those who were most knowledgeable indicated that due to previous abusive encounters, they lacked trust in local law enforcement to uphold these protections. The local harm reduction agency served as a site of hope for participants as they leveraged services to restore a sense of control over their lives and drug use. Engagement with such services make it possible for participants to implement numerous harm reduction strategies in their daily lives and provided them with social support that was otherwise unavailable. Drug use associated stigma and violent encounters with police create significant barriers to accessing harm reduction services for rural people who inject drugs. As such, reducing drug use associated stigma is necessary to ensure that people who inject drugs can safely access needed harm reduction, health care, and treatment services.

The purpose of this study was to examine the interaction between substance use messages in music media and how it impacts perception of substance and current substance use for different ethnicities. Four hundred and eighty four participants were recruited from a large southeastern university. Participant ethnicities included Caucasian, Hispanic, African American and Asian. This study examined frequency of substance use messages in popular music lyrics and music videos, along with participant self-reported ethnicity and, rates of substance use and perceived risk from substance use. Differences in perception of risk and current substance use were indicated between Caucasian and African American participants. Interestingly, an inverse relationship between exposure to substance use messages and perception of risk of harm from substance use was noted, with more frequent exposure being correlated with greater perceived risk and lower current substance use. Regression analysis indicated that ethnicity predicted frequency of substance use messages in music media, and exposure to substance use messaged predicted both perception of risk of harm from substance use and current substance use, supporting the hypothesized role of music as a mediator between ethnicity and substance use.

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