The Moderating Roles of Ethnic-Racial Identity Components in the Association Between ACEs and Cannabis Use: Exploring Ethnic-Racial Differences Among Emerging Adults

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are an established risk factor for substance use (Dube et al., 2003), but limited work has tested the moderating role of cultural factors. The current study tested whether ACEs were related to cannabis use, and whether ERI components moderated this relation among 733 emerging adults. We also tested ethnic-racial group differences between Black, White, and Asian participants. A series of nested multigroup path analysis models were used, and findings indicated that among all participants, ACEs were associated with more cannabis use ( p = .03), but ERI exploration moderated this association for Black participants ( p = .01) and White participants ( p = .00). At low ERI exploration, ACEs were associated with greater cannabis use, but at high ERI exploration ACES were not associated with cannabis use. Further, among Asian participants, ERI exploration ( p = .00) and resolution ( p = .02) were directly associated with less cannabis use.