Prevalence of substance abuse and associated factors among university students, Tigray, Ethiopia, 2016

Background: Substance abuse is the taking of substances or a deliberate use of substances for the purposes other than its intended purpose. It is estimated that 9% of the global population aged 12 or older are classified with dependence on psychoactive substance such as alcohol. Substance abuse among Ethiopia adolescents is considerably rising.  Therefore this study aimed that to assess prevalence of substance abuse and associated factors among university students, Tigray, Ethiopia, 2016. 
Methods: Institutional based cross-sectional study was employed among university students and the data was collected from Feb-June/2016 using a self-administered questionnaire. A total of 471 Students were selected from the selected colleges of the university using a multistage sampling technique. The collected data was coded, entered, cleaned and analyzed using SPSS version 20. Logistic regression model was used to determine prediction levels of independent variables to the outcome variables and a variable having P<0.05 was considered as statistically significant variable in all tests.  
Results: A total of 471 students were included in the study and making a response rate of 96.8%. Of these, 57.2% were males. Students who are substance abuse were 43.9%. Their friends who take substances in school [AOR=2.54, 95% CI (5.42, 15.02)] and family member who use substances abuse [AOR=1.78, 95% CI (3.34, 8.37)] were the factors that lead for students to use substance abuse. 
Conclusion: There exists a significant proportion of substance abuse among university students. So, strengthening the current substance abuse education program and further revising strategies for substance abuse risk reduction in university students should be considered.