Substance Abuse Touches Around Half of All U.S. Families

According to Gallup, the effects of substance abuse are felt by around half of all American families. Only slight differences were recorded by the survey regarding race or sex.

46 percent of U.S. adults reported having dealt with substance abuse in their families. 18 percent said those were related just to alcohol, while 10 percent said their problems were related just to drugs. Another 18 percent said they had dealt with both.

Women were slightly more likely to report substance abuse being a problem in their families. The difference between non-Hispanic whites and nonwhites reporting problems with substance abuse were two percentage points for alcohol and just one percentage point for drugs.

That widened to 6 and 9 percent, respectively, between people reporting weekly church attendance and people seldom or never attending church service. Whether respondents held a college degree or not actually had a similar impact – people who did not go to or finish college were 7 percent more likely to report alcohol abuse and 4 percent more likely to report drug abuse in their families.

The highest discrepancies were actually recorded in terms of region. Easterners were 9 percent less likely to report alcohol abuse than Westerners, while Midwesterners were 10 percent less likely to report drug abuse than people in the West.