More Than Friends and Family? Estimating the Direct and Indirect Effects of Religiosity on Substance Use in Emerging Adulthood

• DOI: 10.1177/0022042616659760
• Author: Robert A. Thomson
• Date: 01 October 2016
• Published date: 01 October 2016
• Subject Matter: Articles

Journal of Drug Issues

2016, Vol. 46(4) 326 –346

© The Author(s) 2016

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DOI: 10.1177/0022042616659760

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Article

More Than Friends and Family?

Estimating the Direct and Indirect

Effects of Religiosity on Substance

Use in Emerging Adulthood

Robert A. Thomson, Jr.1

Abstract

Religiosity tends to negatively influence substance use among emerging adults because religious

communities can serve as pro-social reference groups and provide alternative resources for

coping with stress and negative life events. The relationship may also be mediated, however,

by differences in family attachments and drug- and alcohol-using peer associations. With data

from a nationally representative panel study, I implemented longitudinal structural equation

modeling to simultaneously assess both direct and indirect effects of religiosity on substance

use. While a substantive portion of its effect is mediated by substance-using peers, it is mostly

direct, and increasingly so as individuals transition from late adolescence to emerging adulthood.

Furthermore, religion appears to be a particularly effective social institution, as religiosity

decreases contemporary substance use but is not itself affected by prior substance use.

Religiosity may thus be beneficial with regard to certain short- and long-term health outcomes

related to substance use during emerging adulthood.

Keywords

religiosity, substance use, emerging adulthood, social learning, social bonding

Introduction

Tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana use and/or misuse have been established as risk factors for a

variety of negative health outcomes. Smoking, for instance, increases the risk of lung cancer,

heart disease, stroke, cirrhosis of the liver, and a number of other types of cancers and cardiovas-

cular, circulatory, and respiratory diseases (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC],

2014b; Hummer, Nam, & Rogers, 1998). The effects of marijuana on health are less clear, as it

has some benefits with regard to pain management (Russo & Hohmann, 2013), but it is also

associated with short-term residual neuropsychological impairment (Pope & Yurgelun-Todd,

1996); impaired fetal growth among pregnant women (Zuckerman et al., 1989); negative pulmo-

nary effects such as coughing, wheezing, and sputum production (Tashkin et al., 1987); and pos-

sibly lung cancer (see Mehra, Moore, Crothers, Tetrault, & Fiellin, 2006).

1Baylor University, Waco, TX, USA

Corresponding Author:

Robert A. Thomson, Jr., Department of Sociology, Baylor University, One Bear Place #97326, Waco, TX 76798-7326, USA.

Email: bob_thomson@baylor.edu

659760JODXXX10.1177/0022042616659760Journal of Drug IssuesThomson

research-article2016

Thomson 327

The relationship between alcohol use and health is likewise ambiguous; a number of studies

suggest that moderate alcohol use is protective against some types of ailments, including coro-

nary heart disease, stroke, and hypertension (Gaziano et al., 1993; Rimm, Williams, Fosher,

Criqui, & Stampfer, 1999), as well as mortality (Di Castelnuovo et al., 2006; Gmel, Gutjahr, &

Rehm, 2003), though a recent meta-analysis has called these findings into question. Stockwell

et al. (2016) argued that some “abstainers,” including former drinkers often misclassified as

abstainers, may be biased toward ill health. After adjusting for such biases, they found that low-

volume drinking had no net mortality benefit. Furthermore, very heavy drinking has been well

established as a risk factor for the aforementioned conditions, as well as liver disease, cancer,

mental health problems, and physical injury related to drunk driving and fighting (CDC, 2014b;

Gill, Zezulka, Shipley, Gill, & Beevers, 1986; Hingson, Heeren, Zakocs, Kopstein, & Wechsler,

2002; Kozararevic et al., 1980). Alcohol use among college students has also been linked to

insufficient and irregular sleep, with both direct and indirect negative effects on grade point aver-

age (Singleton & Wolfson, 2009), rape victimization (Mohler-Kuo, Dowdall, Koss, & Wechsler,

2004), and a number of “secondhand effects” such as verbal and physical assaults and the destruc-

tion of personal property (Nelson, Xuan, Lee, Weitzman, & Wechsler, 2009).

Some health researchers have suggested that decreased substance use partially explains the

observed positive relationships between religiosity, or an individual’s degree of religious devo-

tion and involvement, and both mental and physical health (Burdette, Weeks, Hill, & Eberstein,

2012; George, Ellison, & Larson, 2002; T. D. Hill, Burdette, & Idler, 2012). Religious communi-

ties, many of which have teachings related to taking care of your body as a “temple of God,” can

both serve as pro-social reference groups (Cochran, Beeghley, & Bock, 1988) and provide alter-

native resources for coping with stress and negative emotions (Bradshaw & Ellison, 2010; Jang

& Johnson, 2003). Until recently, however, the relationship between religion and substance use

among adolescents, for whom such behaviors are considered delinquent, had received relatively

little attention in deviance research, which Cullen (2011) partially attributed to Hirschi’s neglect

of religion in his influential articulation of social bonding theory (Hirschi, 1969), as well as the

null findings of his infamous Hellfire study (Hirschi & Stark, 1969).

Over the past couple decades, however, the pro-social effects of religion and religiosity on

substance use and other forms of delinquency have become well established (for reviews, see

Baier & Wright, 2001; Johnson, Li, Larson, & McCullough, 2000; Kelly, Polanin, Jang, &

Johnson, 2015), though conflicting findings suggest that questions remain regarding mechanisms

related to two important agents of socialization, family and friends. Specifically, family attach-

ments and differential peer associations are thought to mediate the effects of religiosity on ado-

lescent substance use, leading some researchers to suggest that it is merely indirect or potentially

spurious (Burkett & Warren, 1987; Cochran, Wood, & Arneklev, 1994). While some studies have

confirmed that religiosity indeed has no direct effect on substance use (Adamczyk & Palmer,

2008; Desmond, Soper, & Kraus, 2011), others have found that a direct effect of religiosity

remains even when controlling for a number of variables of social bonding and social learning,

such as delinquent peers, parental attachment, and family structure (Bahr & Hoffmann, 2008;

Longest & Vaisey, 2008; Thomson & Jang, 2016; Ulmer, Desmond, Jang, & Johnson, 2012), and

still others have found mixed results (M. C. Hill & Pollock, 2015; Hoffmann, 2014).

Even less is known about these mechanisms in emerging adulthood, a period of particular

vulnerability for substance use given that it is a unique time of transition and identity formation

(Arnett, 2000). Although peer networks, moral schemas, and processes governing substance

use are dynamic and interrelated rather than static and unidirectional (Hoffmann, 2014), only

a limited number of studies have begun to investigate the religion/substance use relationship in

this period of the life course (Ellison, Bradshaw, Rote, Storch, & Trevino, 2008; M. C. Hill &

Pollock, 2015; Hoffmann, 2014; Perkins, 1985). The present study thus contributes to this

growing literature by considering mechanisms related to differential peer association and