DRUG-USE AMONG SECONDARY-SCHOOL STUDENTS IN ZIMBABWE

A survey of drug we carried out in Zimbabwe in 1990/91 involved 2783 s tudents from five different school categories in two provinces. Result s show existence of use and experimenting, although prevalence is gene rally lower than corresponding European figures. Alcohol and tobacco i s more common among urban than rural students and more common among pr ivate than public school students. Cannabis prevalence varies less, al though high density urban school students report higher figures than o thers. Prevalence of inhalants is highest at private schools. Use of a lcohol, tobacco and cannabis increases with age for both sexes, contra ry to inhalants which shows a decreasing tendency for females and mini mal variations across age-groups for males. Scale analysis for urban s tudents produced results similar to European studies, demonstrating a stage pattern beginning with alcohol and tobacco, followed by cannabis or inhalants. The same pattern could not be demonstrated among rural students. it is argued that drug use among urban students is more deve loped nor only quantitatively but also in that the use of different dr ugs is systematically strongly intercorrelated Pattern variations betw een school-types may also reflect a stronger external or western influ ence on urban than rural adolescent drug use behaviour.