What Happened in Harlem? Analysis of a Decline in Heroin Use among a Generation Unit of Urban Black Youth

Abstract

The annual prevalence of heroin use among a cross-section of black adolescents and young adults from Harlem fell from eight percent in 1970–71 to less than three and a half percent in 1975–76. The most important component of this change was a sharp decline in the rate of heroin initiation among younger birth cohorts. Controlling for differential opportunity based on age of cohorts, twenty-two percent of this sample who were born in 1952 initiated use of heroin by age 18, compared to three percent of those born in 1957. The explanation that appears most plausible for these findings is that, for most individuals, the actions of initiating and continuing heroin use appear to be a product of rational choice. And the context within which that choice was made was appreciably altered in this generation unit of Harlem youth.