A study of substance abuse among male engineering students staying at hostels in a township near Kolkata
Background: Substance is being more common during college days, due to academic pressure, peer group effects, popularity and easy access to common substances. Men are more likely to engage in substance abuse. This was supposed to be more common in hostels. A study was carried out among male engineering students staying at hostels - with aims to find out the magnitude of substance abuse, to assess the potential risk of different substances abused and to find out a comparison between these two groups.Methods: Study was carried out with the help of two part questionnaire, one part containing alcohol, smoking and substance involvement screening test 8 item screening tool proposed by WHO (WHO-ASSIST). Other part contained socio demographic information. First 50 students, in each two colleges were enrolled in the study after getting their consent.Results: Ever use of tobacco product was found to be 66.0% and 22.0%, of alcoholic beverages: 72.0% and 26.0%, of cannabis: 46.0% and 14.0% - for students of government and private engineering college respectively. In the past 3 months, tobacco (36.0%) followed by cannabis (12.0%) were found to be the most commonly abused substances in government engineering college students while both (6.0%) cannabis and tobacco were the commonest substances of daily abuse among private engineering college students.Conclusions: High level of substance abuse was found to be present among male engineering students staying at hostels with higher level found among students of government engineering college.