[Rise in knowledge and contact with drugs in 1st grade students of public and private schools in Ribeirao Preto]

This study was made to determine contact with drugs among first-grade students from public and private schools in the Riberao Preto community. The various social classes were considered. We decided to use the concept of social status for out empiric research, which defines it as a group of persons who have a certain number of characteristics in common which can be measured, that is, common status, and which may be defined by different criteria. Schools were classified according to their pupils, and after this initial classification, they were divided into 4 groups. A school was selected by lots from each group. A questionnaire with open and closed questions was used as instrument for data collection. According to the collected data, it was concluded that all pupils, independently from their social and economic level, had a superficial knowledge on drugs: 48.2% of those surveyed said they knew people in their neighbourhood who used drugs; 8.8% referred that they had been offered drugs. Drugs offered to them included; cocaine, marijuana, hashish, cigarettes and toxic pencils. The other 63% referred that nobody had given them any advice regarding drugs.