Assuming that differences in heavy drinking were truly controlled, our findings indicate that heavy episodic consumption and pattern do not fully explain racial disparities in alcohol problems. This implies that public health efforts must do more than focus on reducing heavy drinking in order to eliminate these disparities. One area for future work concerns drinking to cope with social and environmental stressors. As noted earlier, drinking to cope may be an important link between experiences of chronic material hardship, minority status (i.e., racial stigma and discrimination), and alcohol problems. Notably, drinking to cope has been associated with alcohol abuse and dependence symptoms independent of alcohol consumption (Cooper, et al., 1995), and thus, even at low levels of heavy drinking, could result in problems.
