Abstract

DEL PILAR NAVIA BUENO, María  and  INSTITUTO DE INVESTIGACION EN SALUD Y DESARROLLO IINSAD et al. Social impact and relationship with prevalence of drug use among college students in the cities of La Paz and El Alto. 2009. Cuad. - Hosp. Clín. [online]. 2014, vol.55, n.4, pp.36-42. ISSN 1562-6776.

AIM. Determine the prevalence ofdrug use, both licit and illicit, in university students from the cities of La Paz and El Alto in management 2009. METHODS. Cross sectional study, 2000 university students who were studying any career degree, of public and private universities selected by simple random sampling. Validated instruments were used by the Inter-American Commission for the Control of Drug Abuse CICAD and the Inter-American System of Uniform Data on Drug Use SIDUC for university students. RESULTS. The licit drugs with the highest consumption are alcohol and tobacco, followed by tranquilizers and finally stimulants. Alcohol has a lifetime prevalence of 73.9 %, 69% and 45.6 % year month, followed by the tobacco where is 67.6 %, 57.3 % and 39.8 % respectively. The prevalence of lifetime use of tranquilizers is 22 %. Illicit drugs show lower values in relation to the licit, within this group with the greatest consumption is marijuana with a lifetime prevalence of 13.6 %, 4.4 % year and 2% month, followed by cocaine with lifetime prevalence of3.9 % and inhalants with lifetime prevalence of 3 %. The age of onset of the use of licit and illicit drugs was from 7 years. The male is the most affected with the exception of tranquilizers and stimulants. CONCLUSIONS. The main problem in the university students of the cities of La Paz and El Alto in Bolivia is the consumption of alcohol and tobacco, without detracting from the consumption of other drugs.

Keywords : Prevalence; prescription drugs; street drugs; universities.