Prevalence of substance use and its associated risk factors among adolescents in an urban area –A cross sectional study.

Introduction- Substance use among adolescents has life-threatening consequences in future and also a challenge for policy makers to reduce this burden. This work outlines several important issues related to substance use among adolescents.: Objectives-(1) prevalence of substance uses among adolescents; (2) the presence risk factors associated with substance use. (3) current preventive interventions for adolescent population. Materials and Methods-A cross sectional study was carried out in the urban field practice area of a private medical college with use of a semi structured questionnaire and sample size collected was 350.Results-Majority of study population were male (76%) and mean age was 14.6 ± 2.8 years .Prevalence of substance use among adolescents was found to be 22.29% .Maximum were addicted to alcohol (66.6%) followed by Gutkha (44.8%), paan (30.7%), gudakhu (29.4%), cigarette(21.8%), cocaine(2.5%), heroine (1.28%) and bidi (1.28%).Addiction was found more in school dropouts , nuclear family ,broken family and problem family background and adolescents from upper lower socio economic status. Conclusion - This challenge of substance use among adolescents requires consistent and unremitting attention in order to execute effective prevention programs with continuous re-evaluation of the situation.