Local Ties, Trans-Local Ties, and Substance Use among Rural-to-Urban Migrants in China.

China has witnessed unprecedented rural-to-urban migration since the early 1980s. While trying to assimilate into the city, rural-to-urban migrants still maintain close ties with their home communities. This study examines how local ties and trans-local ties of rural-to-urban migrants affect their alcohol and tobacco use. Data were obtained from the 2016 and 2018 China Labor-force Dynamics Survey, a nationally representative sample of adults aged over 15 in 29 provinces in China. Participants included 1426 rural-to-urban migrant workers and 6438 urban residents in China. We found that compared to urban natives, rural-to-urban migrants had higher tobacco use prevalence (logit = 0.19, 95% CI = [0.03, 0.35]; p < 0.05) and more frequent alcohol use (logit = 0.27, 95% CI = [0.11, 0.42]; p < 0.001) after adjusting for sociodemographic characteristics. Migrants with more local social ties engaged in more frequent drinking (having >10 local friends vs. having 0 local friends: logit = 0.58, [0.10, 1.06], p < 0.05), whereas trans-local ties were not a significant correlate. In contrast, migrants who returned to their hometown more times (an indicator of trans-local ties) were more likely to be current tobacco users (logit = 0.01, 95% CI = [0.00, 0.02], p < 0.01) after adjusting for sociodemographic variables. These findings extended the research on social networks and health behaviors by identifying how local and trans-local ties differentially affected the vulnerabilities of tobacco and alcohol use among rural-to-urban migrants in China. The findings suggested that policies and interventions on reducing migrants' health risk behaviors should focus on the role of different types of social ties.

Control, Peer Association, and Permissive Attitudes to Drug Use: An Integrated Model Explaining Illicit Drug Use in China.

Since 2014, synthetic drugs have replaced opioids to become the most popular illicit drugs in China. Objectives: To explain illicit drug use in contemporary China, this research develops an integrative theoretical model including control theories, differential association theory, and normalization theory. Methods: The study draws on the first-hand data collected from 716 drug users in four compulsory drug detoxification institutions in China. Results: Low self-control increases drug use frequency through the heightened association with drug-use friends and more permissive attitudes to drug use simultaneously. However, family attachment indirectly influences drug use frequency via more permissive attitudes to drug use but not drug-use friends. Conclusion &contribution: The results show that the influence of self-control and family attachment is fully mediated by drug-use friends and permissive attitudes to drug use. This study provides a detailed picture of the mechanism of how self- and social control influence drug use frequency and contributes to the larger body of scholarship integrating criminological theories to understand drug use behaviors in China. The implications of the findings for scientific and effective drug treatment programs are also discussed.

Effects of self-control, drug-use peers and family attachment on drug use among Chinese users: A gender-specific analysis.

INTRODUCTION: The increasing trend of synthetic drug use has been a significant concern in China. The current research adopted a gendered perspective to examine the effects of self-control, drug-use peers and family attachment on drug use frequency in China. METHODS: This cross-sectional survey research recruited 785 people who used drugs from four compulsory drug rehabilitation institutions in Guangdong and Shandong Province of China in 2018. Ordinary least squares regression analyses were conducted to examine the gendered effects of self-control (Grasmick et al.'s cognitive scale), drug-use peers and family attachment on drug use frequency. RESULTS: Low self-control was neither a significant nor gendered predictor of drug use frequency when controlling for effects of drug-use peers and family attachment. Drug-use peers strongly increased participants' drug use frequency, regardless of gender. However, an important finding is that for males, support from families reduced drug use frequency but conversely meeting and contact with families increased drug use frequency. For females, only trust in families prevented their further involvement in drug use. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS: Low self-control may not be a core explanatory factor for drug use behaviours in China. Thus, treatment programs should focus more on skills building than self-control. Future programs could focus more on reducing association with their drug-use peers and further explore the complex relationships with their families. Gender should be considered in treatment options.