A Study on Drug Abuse in Zagazig University Students, Egypt: Cross Sectional Study

Background: Drug addiction is a major public health and socioeconomic problems worldwide that annoy the Egyptian government, as it deals with younth within the age of productivity. Aim of the Work: To assess drug abuse among Zagazig University students, also to identify the most common abused drug among them. Subjects and Methods: A cross-sectional study conducted on 750 students in Zagazig University during the period from the beginning of November 2015 to the end of November 2016,after taken consent . Data of the students were taken from the questionnaire filled by students and the results of screening urine samples. Results: The prevalence of smoking among all studied students was 16.81% and strongly related to gender as in total males 26.1% were current smokers while in total females only 1.4%; while, the prevalence of abusing alcohols was 6% of all studied students and all of them were males. The prevalence of drug abuse was 7.41% among all studied students. The most abused drug was tetrahydrocannabinol (3.9%) followed by tramadol (1.9%) then benzodiazepines (0.67%), while, opium and barbiturates each one of them (0.47%). Polydrug users were about 18% which were only males .The tramadol was the commonest drug to use in polydrug users. Conclusion: Drug abuse in Zagazig university students is very serious problem damaging the youth and the community. Recommendation: Future longitudinal studies should be conducted to investigate the risk factors of drug abuse and suggest the use of urine analysis for drugs of abuse for all students before joining the university.