Early adolescent antecedents of narcotic abuse

A retrospective study of the sociocultural and behavioral characteristics of 200 persons under treatment for narcotic addiction was done and the results compared with those of 200 matched nonaddict peers. Twenty-eight of the original 104 items tested were found to discriminate between the two samples at the 5% level of significance. A factor analysis of these items indicated that a general delinquency behavior factor and three family background factors accounted for most of the variance in the data.