Table 2 summarizes racial/ethnic differences in alcohol-related problems, current drinking, and heavy drinking among whites, African Americans and Hispanics. In the overall sample including current drinkers and non-drinkers, African Americans and whites had similar rates of alcohol problems. In contrast, Hispanics were marginally more likely than whites to report social consequences of drinking (8.2% vs. 6.4%), and significantly more likely to report two or more dependence symptoms (4.4% vs. 2.1%). Given the greater abstinence of African Americans and Hispanics, further comparisons were made in the subsample of current drinkers (shown in lower half of table 2). Disparities in alcohol problems rates became much more apparent when non-drinkers were excluded: African American drinkers reported significantly higher rates of social consequences and alcohol dependence symptoms compared to whites (13.4% vs. 8.8% reporting consequences, and 10.8% vs. 6.2% reporting dependence symptoms), and among Hispanic drinkers, problem rates were nearly two times greater than those of whites (14.8% and 11.8% of Hispanics reported consequences and dependence symptoms, respectively). When alcohol dependence was operationalized according to DSM-IV criteria, thus providing a more stringent measure of
