Our findings were consistent with previous research showing that adolescents with substance using parents are at a heightened risk for substance use themselves, and that a portion of this risk is attributable to parenting factors. Specifically, maternal problematic substance use was associated with adolescent alcohol, cigarette, and illicit prescription drug use, and paternal problematic substance use was associated with adolescent alcohol, cigarette, marijuana, ecstasy, and illicit prescription drug use. These findings suggest that paternal problematic substance use may be more important than maternal problematic substance use in predicting a range of substances used by adolescents. However, due to the low prevalence of maternal problematic substance use reported in this study, we believe that this finding should be replicated before firm conclusions can be drawn. Further, this is one of the first studies to show the association between problematic parental substance use and adolescent prescription drug use across different racial/ethnic groups. This is an especially important finding given the increase in illicit use of prescription drugs among adolescents in recent years (Johnston et al., 2010).
