The main objectives of this work were to investigate the prevalence of drug use among 5th grade to 12th grade students in a small city in the south of Brazil and to verify if they use any kind of health service. The study was carried out in nine out of a total of ten public and private schools. The sample consisted of 889 (18,10%) students out of a total of 4,909 students, 4,139 (84,31%) in public schools and 770 (15,69%) in private ones. The participants answered a questionnaire that followed a model used by Galduróz, Noto and Carlini (1997) in the 4th Study of Drug Use Among Elementary and High School Students in Ten Brazilian Capital Cities. The collected data was inserted in the Epi Info 6.04d software and we have observed that the most used drugs were alcohol, tobacco, inhalants, marijuana, and amphetamines. With the exception of alcohol and tobacco, the most used drugs among women were inhalants, marijuana, tranquilizers, amphetamines and sedatives. Among men the most used drugs were inhalants, marijuana, amphetamines, tranquilizers and cocaine. Drug use is more frequent among older students and those who attend classes at night. There was no significant consumption difference among students of different socioeconomic levels. In addition, we have compared our results with other researches.
Drug use; Schools; epidemiology; Collective health
