Use of psychoactive substances among male secondary school pupils in Egypt: a study on a nationwide representative...

The present work is part of a series of epidemiological studies the main aim of which is to shed light on the extent and patterns of the use of substances among various sectors of the Egyptian population. A standardized questionnaire with established item re-take reliabilities was administered to 14,656 male secondary school pupils constituting a 4% representative sample of the whole population of Egyptian secondary school boys. Demographic and drug-related findings are discussed. Among the reported results the following are deemed of special interest: (1) Percentages of arts students who smoke tobacco, ever use prescription psychotropic substances, narcotics and alcohol consistently exceed their counterparts studying science and mathematics. (2) Ages of onset for the whole menu of substances range between 12 and 16 years. (3) Those among the experimenters who admitted continuing to take drugs ranged between 8% (for alcohol) and 21.41% (for synthetic drugs). (4) Significantly more urban than rural students smoke tobacco, and try cannabis and alcoholic beverages. (5) There is a strong association between exposure to drug culture and drug taking, confirming what we repeatedly reported previously. (6) More users than non-users tend to see drug consumption as either harmless or even useful. (7) Differentiation should be made between vulnerable and non-vulnerable non-users. Vulnerable non-users share with actual users a number of components of a common "drug ideology". (8) There are very significant correlations between drug taking and various aspects of misconduct verging on delinquency.