Polydrug Use Among Secondary School Students: combinations, prevalences and risk profiles

Abstract

The aim is to describe polydrug use among secondary school students: combinations of substances, number of students per user type and corresponding risk profiles. The method employed was as follows. Data were derived from the 1999 sample of the Dutch National School Survey on Substance Use. The analysis was limited to secondary school students between 12 and 16 years, at which age it is still compulsory to attend school (N = 6236). Studied substances are alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, ecstasy, amphetamines, opiates and cocaine. Of the students, 56.7% used one or more substances. Among the users, 41.8% were polydrug users in the sense that they had used more than one substance during the previous 4 weeks. In the student population concerned of about 1 000 000, 243 000 were polydrug users of whom 146 000 use only alcohol and tobacco, 67 000 combine alcohol or tobacco with cannabis, and 21 000 combine alcohol, tobacco or cannabis with at least one hard drug such as ecstasy, cocaine, amphetamines or heroin. The risk of polydrug use increased with increasing age. Prevalence rates were highest among ethnic Dutch students, very low among Moroccan students and high at the lower educational levels. By comparison with girls, boys had a specific risk of becoming the type of polydrug user using soft or hard drugs. The high prevalence of polydrug use among young students makes this an important topic for research, monitoring and prevention.