There is a critical need for the most current information available on the prevalence of substance use disorders (SUD) among immigrants vis-à-vis that of individuals born in the United States (US). We report the prevalence of SUDs among immigrants from major world regions and top immigrant-sending countries, and assess key moderators (i.e., age, gender, family income, age of migration, time in US) of the relationship between immigrant status and SUD risk.
The data source used for the present study is the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC-III, 2012-2013), a nationally representative survey of 36,309 civilian, non-institutionalized adults ages 18 and older in the US. Logistic regression was employed to examine the relationship between immigrant status and SUD risk.
Immigrants were found to be substantially less likely than US-born individuals to be diagnosed with a past-year or lifetime SUD, including alcohol, cannabis, cocaine, and opioid use disorders. These findings held across major world region and among immigrants from the top-ten immigrant sending nations, and across differences in age, gender, family income, age of migration, and time spent in the US.
Results from the present study provide up-to-date and cogent evidence that immigrants use alcohol and drugs, and meet criteria for SUDs, at far lower rates than do US-born individuals. Moreover, we provide new evidence that the protective effect of nativity holds for immigrants from an array of global regions and sending countries, and across key demographic and migration-related differences.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 22. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 30 August 2026.
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#2,186,302
of 34,243,167 outputs
Outputs from Addictive Behaviors
#518
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#31,946
of 357,943 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Addictive Behaviors
#12
of 98 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,243,167 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 93rd percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 5,046 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 13.3. This one has done well, scoring higher than 89% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 98 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 87% of its contemporaries.
