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.