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Prevalence And Patterns Of Phycho Active Substance Use Among Secondary School Students
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The youths in Nigeria like many countries of the world are increasingly developing addiction
to psychoactive substances. The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA, 2011)
collected drugs use and abuse data from schools, records of patients admitted at mental health
institutions for drug problems and interview of persons arrested for drug offences. The result
showed that youths constitute the high risk group for drug trafficking and abuse. Friends and
school mates account for about 90% of the source of influence of the use and abuse of
various psychoactive substances. In Nigeria, alcohol and cigarette are legal substances but,
the two have been discovered to cause physical damage to human bodies. It has been reported
that smoking tobacco causes 90.0% of lung cancer, 30.0% of all cancers, and 80.0% of other
chronic lung diseases (Sale 2008). Apart from these health implications, according to Stephen
(2010), alcohol and cigarette are said to be “gateway drugs†to other more potent
psychoactive drugs like marijuana, heroin and cocaine.
The future of any community, society, state or nation is tied to the character of the adolescent
in that particular place, area or locality. It is also said that “The youth are the leaders of
tomorrowâ€. Therefore responsible youth in the society indicates responsible and brighter
future of that society and also the reverse is the case.
In our society people are known to have had problems that had made them to adopt various
measures to cope with such problems and live successfully within the confines of societal
normative values. While some people take solace in lawful ways others resort to unlawful
and unhealthy measures such as the use of drugs or psychoactive substances to the extent of
abusing them, hence resulting in addiction. According to Edum (2006) the adolescent in our
society are not left out in this, as they are either influenced by peer group while others do so
because of the easy availability of the abused substances, others also watch on television and
films and some read in books and so try to experiment to experience the effects. The effects
of specific psychoactive substance vary depending on their mechanism of action, the amount
consumed and the history of the user among other factors.
An ugly fact that is with us in the recent time is road traffic accident related to psychoactive
substance use as well as increased crime rate in Nigeria, though a number of measures are put
in place to check this menace. This includes the establishment of the National Drug
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]The study was designed to determine prevalence and patterns of Psychoactive Substance useamong Senior Secondary School Students in Dala Local Government Area (LGA), KanoState Nigeria. The study adopted a cross sectional descriptive survey design. Simple randomsampling procedure was used to select two Secondary Schools out of the ten GovernmentSenior Secondary School in Dala LGA, of Kano State. Both Schools have a combinedpopulation of 2293 students made up 1202 boys and 1096 girls. The two Schoo ... Continue reading---
