Estudo exploratório sobre o uso de substâncias ilícitas entre universitários em uma cidade de Minas Gerais

Abstract

Developed studies around the world show that the use of many kinds of drugs have occurred earlier and abusive. Actually, we can observe the substantial raise of the use of some legal and illegal drugs in the youth population of Brazil, having Elementary and High Schools as the main target of traffic dealers. This research has the aim to know what are, according to university students, the protective factors to avoid the use of illegal drugs. The research was realized with university students from both sexes in the last periods of the courses form the Science and Health Institute of a University Campus from a city in Minas Gerais. This study was made with the purpose to verify if there is any difference about the use of these substances and about the perception of these protector factors between the sexes. We submitted these students to a questionnaire with 22 questions, multiple-choice and open ones, about the habits and customs of the students about the use and experimentation of legal and illegal substances. It included 128 female students (73.99%) and 45 male students (26.01%); (n=173). In another moment, we separated them into two discussion groups of students that said they had never tried, and some said they did not continued using these illegal substances after their first experience. The most mentioned place to have their first experience with legal and illegal substances was at parties. In the female group, 34.61% admitted had used those substances only for curiosity, some of them did not continue using them because they were aware of the dangers related to its use. This group used some protectors factors as self-wish (34.36%), family role (20.98%) and information (18.84%). In the male group, 41.66% said that the experience was bad and that they regretted to had experimented them. To 25% of this group, the only reason to had tried them, was also for curiosity. To male participants the protectors factors were decision/shelf-wish (29.59%), family (20.41%) and school /education (19.39%). In this survey, we could infer that men are easier to get involved with drugs dealers than women. The main dangerous factor pointed in this study, was the parties and friends. We also could identify that in this group the use of some “soft-drugs”, with less risk of dependence. Both men and women showed to be very curious about having some experience with drugs despite of being conscious of the risks, both said that the final decision to use and experiment drugs is in each person, at the family, in the information and at the role that school and education have, as protective factors