Sampson and Laub's age-graded informal social control theory has generated arash of recent attention vying to become the prominent explanation for criminalinvolvement across the life-course. It, however, has spawned a number ofcriticisms and an equivocal body of research. Many of these criticisms havecentered on whether their findings from their reanalysis of the Glueck data - adataset consisting of all white males born in the late 1920's and early1930's - can be generalized to other racial groups, females, and historicalperiods. Using latent growth curve analyses, the current project exploreswhether marriage, a factor highlighted by Sampson and Laub, is related todesistance from substance abuse among a sample of African Americans born in the 1950-1960s in Harlem, New York City. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]