Law Commons^™

The Forgotten Fifth: Rural Youth And Substance Abuse, Lisa R. Pruitt

Lisa R Pruitt

This Article seeks to raise the visibility of the roughly twenty percent of the U.S. population who live in rural places—an often forgotten fifth—in relation to the particular challenges presented by adolescent substance abuse. Despite popular notions that substance abuse is essentially an urban phenomenon, recent data demonstrate that it is also a significant problem in rural America. Rural youth now abuse most substances, including alcohol and tobacco, at higher rates and at younger ages than their urban peers.

The Article assesses the social, economic and spatial milieu in which rural adolescent substance abuse has burgeoned. Some features of some …