Drug abuse among junior high school students in Norway

The use of legal and illegal drugs was screened by a questionnaire of 2,265 junior high school adolescents in a rural and semirural area in Norway. Mental symptoms were independently assessed by a personal interview of a random sample of 177 of the pupils. An index of total environmental adversity was developed based on questionnaire items from family, school and leisure time activities. There was a strong relationship between smoking, the level of alcohol consumption and the use of cannabis and other drugs. Pupils who had used cigarettes, alcohol, cannabis, solutions (sniffing) and tranquillizers, all had higher frequencies of mental symptoms than nonusers. The connection between smoking and mental symptoms was stronger in the females than in the males. Smoking, level of alcohol consumption, cannabis use, sniffing and the use of tranquillizers and other psychotropic drugs were all strongly related to an index of global environmental adversity.