Brief reportDrug use and drinking among students in 36 countries
Section snippets
Method
A literature review of high school student drug use studies was done using the library resources of the Addiction Research Foundation (ARF). This included a search using Medline, ETOH, and the ARF library file system. Several hundred papers were found fitting some of the criteria; however, almost all were studies from the United States and Canada. Many were based on small samples, students other than those in high school, or did not cover the drugs of interest. However, usable data on high
Results
Table 1 shows the data for 36 countries expressed as percentages of high school studies reporting lifetime use of alcohol, cannabis, amphetamines, LSD or other hallucinogens, cocaine, and ecstasy. It also reports per-capita alcohol consumption in litres of absolute alcohol per person in the total population. The countries are arranged in three groups according to the level of cannabis use—high (more than 15% users), medium (10–15% users), and low (less than 10% users).
It is clear from the table
Discussion
Student use of alcohol and drugs varied considerably among the 36 countries. Alcohol was by far the most popular drug in all countries, followed by cannabis, amphetamines, ecstasy, and cocaine. Countries with the highest level of cannabis use also had the highest levels of use of amphetamines, ecstasy, and cocaine but not higher rates of alcohol use. Use of various drugs was highly correlated except for alcohol, which correlated with drug use only when certain outlier countries were removed.
Of
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