• Alexandra Blair and Arjumand Siddiqi.
• University of Toronto Dalla Lana School of Public Health, 155 College Street, Toronto, Ontario M5T 3M7, Canada. Electronic address: alexandra.blair@utoronto.ca.
• Prev Med. 2022 Nov 1; 164: 107327107327.

AbstractAs the incidence of deaths from external causes including poisonings, suicide, and alcohol-related liver disease, increases in countries such as the United States and Canada, a better understanding of the fundamental social determinants of the substance use underlying these so-called "deaths of despair", at the population level, is needed. Using data from the nationally representative data from the Canadian Community Health Survey (2003, 2015-2016, 2018 cycles) (N = 30,729), the independent associations between age, sex, marital status, immigrant status, race/ethnicity, education, income, rurality, affective health and the use of illicit substances, opioids (without distinction for prescription status), problematic levels of alcohol, and combined past-year use (≥2) of substances, were explored using multivariate logistic regression, marginal risk, and population attributable fraction estimation, with propensity score-adjusted sensitivity analyses. Males, those who were under 29 years, without a partner, born in Canada, White, or had an affective disorder reported both higher use of individual substances and multiple substances in the past year. Social determinants appear to explain a substantial proportion of substance use patterns overall. Between 10% and 45% of illicit substance, problematic alcohol, and polysubstance use prevalence was attributable to non-partnered marital status, non-immigrant status, and White race/ethnicity. Of opioid use prevalence, 25% was attributable to White race/ethnicity, 13% to affective disorder status and 4% to lower-income. Though not all substance use will result in substance-related morbidity or mortality, these findings highlight the role of social determinants in shaping the intermediary behavioural outcomes that shape population-level risk of "deaths of despair".Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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