Examining college student's participation in the leisure pursuits of drinking and illegal drug use

Much of the research over the last decade has focused on the "benefits of leisure." However, there is another side of leisure that has received much less attention. For example, drinking and illegal drugs are popular leisure activities for many college students, yet leisure researchers have paid scant attention to such pursuits even though these activities often take place during leisure time and in a leisure context. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to address this gap in the leisure literature by examining college students' participation in two leisure pursuits, drinking and illegal drug use. We examined their behavior within two potential explanatory theories, differential association and casual leisure, in hopes that we might identify a particularly salient theoretical framework for a leisure perspective on these timely and socially relevant issues.