In sum, this study suggests that being poor, exposed to prejudice and unfair treatment, young, and unmarried may exacerbate the impact of a given level of heavy drinking on alcohol problems, particularly at no/low heavy drinking. Additional research should be directed at clarifying just how the conditions of drinking may differ in these groups, and how this relates to the biology of addiction. Also important, future studies might aim to identify the specific types of prejudice and unfair treatment that racial/ethnic minorities experience and how these relate to specific drinking patterns and problems, such as drinking to cope and trouble with the law. More broadly, research is needed to better understand racial/ethnic disparities in specific alcohol-related consequences, not completely explained here. Meanwhile, researchers, policymakers, and interventionists might consider implications for alcohol risk guidelines. Our results imply that, among the above subgroups, at-risk drinkers are over-represented at lower levels of heavy drinking. This means that education programs relying on a universal risk threshold could be misleading, and that public health interventions relying on alcohol consumption as the only/dominant marker of alcohol
