Exploring the Prevalence and Correlates of Substance Abuse Amongst the Adolescents of Dharan, Eastern Nepal

Abstract

Background: The burden of substance abuse amongst the youths has increased worldwide including Nepal. There is limited data on prevalence of substance abuse among the adolescents. Hence this study aims to determine the prevalence of substance abuse amongst the adolescents of Dharan, Eastern Nepal.Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted from July 2018 to December 2018. Self-administered structured questionnaire adapted from National Youth Survey sponsored by the Centre for Substance Abuse Prevention was used for data collection from 1125 higher secondary school students. Data was cleaned in Microsoft Excel and analysed using SPSS version 11.5.Results: Prevalence of ever users of tobacco were 46.04% of which the current users were 20.46%, ever users of alcohol were 37.58% of which 15.20% were current users and ever users of drug was 18.19% of which 18.13% were current users. The average age of initiating tobacco, alcohol and drugs were 14.21 ± 3.51, 15.13 ± 7.43 and 14.32 ± 4.41 years respectively. More than half of the drug users (50.71%) used cannabis and the most common reason for using any substance was peer pressure (91.64%). More than one-third (39.5%) purchased any of these substance from local shops. Conclusions: The study reported significant proportion of adolescents involved in substance abuse. The findings of this study may be beneficial for revising/ updating action plans on prevention and control of substance abuse in Nepal.Keywords: Adolescents; alcohol; drug; substance abuse; tobacco.

Prevalence of Substance Use among Youths in Selected Ward of Gadhi Rural Municipality, Sunsari, Nepal: A Descriptive Cross-sectional Study

“…Other studies have reported a lower prevalence of tobacco use (12% to 46%) in youths. 8,12 In our study 37.8% used alcohol. Our finding is similar to that of another study from Eastern Nepal, reporting a prevalence of 37% of youth as alcohol users.⁸ Similarly, 39.4% of students of Goa, India also reported alcohol use.…”

“…A similar finding was also reported in Eastern Nepal. 8 Another study reported that 67.5% of youths had a family history of alcohol use which was especially seen in their fathers. 13 In our study, the majority (29.7%) reported curiosity as the main reason followed by imitation (25.4%) and peer pressure (21.4%) for using substances.…”

“…In 2020, 4.7% of middle school students reported using e-cigarettes in one month and nearly 7% of middle school students and 23% of high school students reported current use of a tobacco product.⁶ To date, only a few studies from Nepal have reported the prevalence of substance use among adolescents. 7,8 However, little is known about the Nepali youth population residing in the eastern region. Hence, we aimed to examine the prevalence of substance use among youths residing in Gadhi Municipality, as well as associations between substance use and selected socio-demographic variables.…”

Polysubstance use in South Asia

“…A national survey on drug use conducted in Nepal in 2020 reported tobacco (mostly in form of cigarettes) as the most commonly (96.8%) used substance, followed by cannabis (84.7%), tranquilizers (73.1%), alcohol (64.8%), opiates (46.6%), inhalants (3.9%), stimulants (2.4%), hallucinogens (1.1%), and other types of drugs (31%) [36]. Substance use is also highly prevalent among school adolescents in Nepal [37].…”