Do motives of drug consumption depend on the number of substances used by adolescents?

Drug consumption by adolescents causes social and health problems. Objective. - This prospective study was designed to examine reasons for and against using substances such as tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana and to di scover whether or not motives to use drugs vary with the number of drugs us ed. Method. - The participants were 886 adolescents from a suburban high school (Nancy, France), who answered a self-report questionnaire. Results. - The response rate was 95% (655 males and 175 females, mean age 1 7.5 +/- 2.5 years). The prevalence of current tobacco use, former tobacco u se and never used was 40.7, 21.3 and 31.7%, respectively. For alcohol consu mption, the results were 85.8, 3.5 and 0.7%, respectively and for marijuana consumption, 34.4, 18.3 and 47.3%, respectively. Ecstasy had already been used by 8.4% of the respondents. The main reasons given by the adolescents to explain why they did or did not use these substances varied with the num ber of drugs used. Conclusion. - This work shows an increasing deterioration of youths' social relations (with his/her parents and with him/herself) that seem to depend on the number of drugs used. Further research is necessary to improve these results. (C) 2001 Editions scientifiques et medicales Elsevier SAS.