Previous studies suggest that religiosity’s effect in moderating youthful
drug use is salient only because wider secular and peer norms do not already
provide clear normative proscriptions.
Yet variations in the secular norms surrounding drug use among students
have been largely ignored in testing this claim. If the lack of secular controls is what
contextually enables religiosity’s restrictive impact, then normative secular
constraints on drug use in a particular setting through both actual and perceived peer norms should be important factors limiting the
degree of religious influence. This
prediction is tested with survey data collected on drug use, attitudes, and
perceptions of peer norms for alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, and hallucinogens in
an undergraduate population in two distinct time periods (1982, N = 1,514 and
1989-91, N = 1,510). Support for a
contextual effect of secular norms on the association between religiosity and
drug use/attitudes is found for males but not for females. Implications of this gender difference are
discussed.