International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health | May 2019 | Vol 6 | Issue 5 Page 1 International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health Jasani PK et al. Int J Community Med Public Health. 2019 May;6(5):xxx-xxx http://www.ijcmph.com pISSN 2394-6032 | eISSN 2394-6040 Original Research Article Prevalence of substance abuse among adolescents of urban and rural community in Surendranagar district, Gujarat Pratik K. Jasani 1 , Yadeepsinh M. Jadeja 2 , Nitesh M. Patel 1 *, Dhara Y. Jadeja 3 , Jayraj B. Shrimali 4 , Shyamal K. Purani 1 INTRODUCTION According to the World Health Organization (WHO), substance abuse refers to the harmful or hazardous use of psychoactive substances, including alcohol and illicit drugs. Substance abuse is “persistent or sporadic drug use inconsistent with or unrelated to acceptable medical practice.” 1 In present scenario, substance abuse has been increasing among children and adolescents. Late childhood and adolescents are periods of explorations and sizeable proportions of adolescents in many states of India experiment with drugs quite early in life. 2 Worldwide, alcohol is one of the leading causes of death and disability. In India, it is estimated that 75 million people are alcohol abusers and nearly 3 million are opioid abusers. 3 About 13,000 deaths per day Worldwide occur due to consumption of tobacco, which is a major ABSTRACT Background: According to the World Health Organization (WHO), substance abuse is “persi stent or sporadic drug use inconsistent with or unrelated to acceptable medical practice.” Recently, substance abuse has been increasing among children and adolescents. Alcohol is one of the leading causes of death and disability globally and in India. Tobacco consumption is a major preventable cause of death, accounting for 13,000 deaths per day globally. This study was conducted to identify the prevalence of substance abuse and its pattern among adolescents in rural and urban community of Surendranagar district. Methods: It was a cross-sectional study carried out among 300 rural (150 from school and 150 from community) and 300 urban (150 from school and 150 from community) adolescents selected by simple random sampling. Data was collected and analysed by Statistical Package for Social Sciences and Microsoft excel have been used to generate graphs, tables, etc. Results: Prevalence of substance abuse in our study was 30.17%. Adolescents from rural community had higher prevalence (37.67%). Prevalence was significantly higher in males (55.33%) than compared to females (5%). Tobacco was most common substance abused by the adolescents. Conclusions: Prevalence of substance abuse was higher in rural compared to urban community and in males compared to females. Chewing form being the most common form of abusing the tobacco followed by smoking and drinking form in our study. Keywords: Substance abuse, Adolescents, Prevalence, Tobacco 1 Department of Community Medicine, C. U. Shah Medical College, Surendranagar, Gujarat, India 2 Rural Health, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India 3 MPH, IIPH, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India 4 Lamda Clinical Research Organization, Gujarat, India Received: 12 March 2019 Accepted: 28 March 2019 *Correspondence: Dr. Nitesh M. Patel, E-mail: niteshmpatel90@gmail.com Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2394-6040.ijcmph20191453