An Increasing Trend of Illicit Drug use Among Romanian University Students From 1999 to 2011

The concept “illicit drug” includes cannabis (herbal cannabis and cannabis resin), amphetamines, LSD or other hallucinogens, crack, cocaine, ecstasy and heroin. Illicit drug use by young people has serious health and social consequences (1). These effects depend on the type and potency of drug, route of administration, consumed dose, frequency of use and health status of the user. Illicit drug use represents a threat to mental stability and increases the odds of death from accidental or intentional drug overdoses, as well as engagement in other unsafe behaviours, such as driving under the influence, having unprotected sex, being involved in delinquent behaviour and dropping out of school. Teens that begin drug use at an early age are at risk of developing addiction and continued drug habits into and throughout adulthood (2-10). Moreover, intravenous drug use is associated with an increased risk of acquiring HIV/AIDS and hepatitis B and C, due to the sharing of used needles (10, 11).

After the fall of the communist regime in 1989, Romania started a process of political, economic and socio-cultural changes, which led, in 2007, to the admission of Romania into the European Union. Along with these socio-economic changes, the health risk behaviours of Romanian young people, such as illicit drug use, also suffered several changes (10-12). National representative studies carried out by the National Agency against drugs in Romania, show that the prevalence of illicit drug use during lifetime among the general population older than 15 years increased from 1.7% to 4.3% from 2007 to 2010. The highest prevalence at both time points were among the age group 15-24 years - 4.1% in 2007 and 9% in 2010 (13). One quarter of European 18–21 year olds and 41% of 21–24 years olds report having consumed an illicit drug in their lifetime (14). Moreover, studies from other countries underline the importance of drug use studies among university students, since they focus on people 18?25 years old, which is the age group that has been demonstrated to have the highest prevalence of drug use in the general population in several countries, but also because they might be at risk due to several individual factors (stress, depression, anxiety) as well as contextual influences (peer social norms and peer pressure, accessibility to illicit drugs, spending leisure time in places where they can purchase illicit drugs) (14-20).

Hence, the present study investigates the evolution of illicit drug use among Romanian university students between 1999 and 2011, giving a special attention to possible gender differences. Factors associated with illicit drug use will be also investigated.

This study investigated the illicit drug use related behaviours among students from one big university town in Romania. It has two main strengths. The first one is the study sample, since it represents one segment of Romanian population which has not been included in national representative studies performed until now.

In Romania, the National agency against drugs was performing national representative surveys among the general population older than 15 years in 2004, 2007 and 2010, but they did not include information about subgroups, such as university students (13). Moreover, ESPAD-The European School Survey Project on alcohol and other drugs was also performed in Romania, allowing the comparison of Romanian school students with their counterparts from other countries, but the data is limited to the age group 15-16 years (1, 21).

The second strength is that it gives an overview on the evolution of illicit drug use among Romanian university students from 1999 to 2011.

The main finding of the study is the increasing trend of illicit drug use from 1999 to 2011, especially cannabis and Ecstasy, which was observed in both genders. Moreover, the intention to use illicit drugs in the future increased both among students who used or did not try illicit drugs before. An increase in illicit drug use (mainly cannabis) was observed also by another study performed among younger Romanian adolescents aged 15-16 years (21), as well as by a national study performed among the general Romanian population older than 15 years (13). At European level, population survey data suggest that, on average, 31.6% of young European people aged 15–34 years have ever used cannabis, while 12.6% have used the drug in the last year and 6.9 % have used it in the last month. The countries with high prevalence of cannabis consumption in the last year included the Czech Republic, Italy and Spain. The countries with low prevalence of cannabis use in the last year (less than 5%) were Romania, Malta, Greece and Cyprus (14).When looking at trends regarding the last year prevalence of cannabis use among young adults aged 15 to 34 from Europe, of the 12 countries with repeated surveys during the period 2003–2008, the majority report a stable situation (Denmark, Germany, Spain, Hungary, Sweden, Finland, and the United Kingdom). Five countries report an increased cannabis use over this period, of at least two percentage points in Bulgaria, Estonia and Slovakia, and about eight percentage points in the Czech Republic and Italy(14). The ESPAD studies showed that the prevalence of lifetime cannabis use among 15-16 years old school students increased from 2007 to 2011 in several countries of Europe, such as Monaco, France, Poland, Latvia, Romania, Cyprus, Greece, while remaining stable or even decreasing in other countries (e.g. Ukraine, Malta) (21).

Unfortunately, less data based on national representative samples are available with regard to illicit drug use among university students in Europe, but several studies performed among university students from different universities in Europe give information with respect to these issues. For instance, a study performed in 2005 in Poland indicates a prevalence of 38.3% of illicit drug use at least once during lifetime among university students from Krakow (19). A French study from 2009 shows a prevalence of illicit drug use of 44% among university students (16). A study performed in seven universities in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland show that 30% of the university students used illicit drugs at least once during lifetime (18). A study from one university in Italy presents that 50.4% of subjects have already tried an illegal drug (17).

Moreover, with respect to gender differences, our study showed that the lifetime use of illicit drugs was higher among boys than girls at each time point, but the ratio of males to females among students reporting the use of illicit drugs in their lifetime varied from 5:1 in 1999 to 2:1 in 2011. Other international studies also underline that illicit drug use is still more frequent among boys than girls in many countries, but differences among genders have started to diminish (4, 14, 15, 21). Similar trends are observed with respect to alcohol and tobacco consumption (21) and might be occurring due to changes in girls’ social behaviour, desire for emancipation and social recognition, women’s struggle for space in the job market, stress, excessive activity, anxiety, and difficulty coping with problems (22, 23).

The results of our study present friends’ influences as playing an important role with respect to illicit drug experimentation, underlining the importance of including in the educational programs for young people issues connected with identification and resistance to peer pressure.

Moreover, among girls, depression and stress are factors associated with illicit drug use, which raise the challenge of developing services which would help university girls to deal with these problems in order to prevent illicit drug use.

Among boys, poor academic performance was associated with illicit drug use, which could be the consequences of the fact that these students are involved in several health risk behaviours, which might influence also their time management and focus for performing academic tasks, with short and long term consequences on their social development.

This study is subject to limitations. First, due to funding and logistical restrictions, the study involved only students from one big university town in Romania. This is inevitably a limit to the generalization of the findings of the study beyond its sample. Second, another common limitation with most studies on this topic is the reliance on students’ self-reports. Although some respondents may not report truthfully, the likelihood of honest responses is maximized in this survey by conducting it anonymously. Thirdly, this study included limited data on factors which could be associated with the consumption of illicit drugs among Romanian young people. Hence, future studies should focus more on these issues, since an insight in the determinants of such behaviour might help develop evidence-based prevention actions. Fourthly, the association identified between illicit drug use and several other factors is based on cross-sectional data, so no conclusions could be derived with regard to causality.

The data resulting from our study call for comprehensive health promotion actions, needed in order to prevent the development of illicit drug use to a higher extent in the future in Romania. Hence, as studies from other European countries also suggest, several strategies and measures should be adopted and implemented both on a declaratory and on a practical level in order to prevent the increase of illicit drug use among Romanian young people (10, 21-24). It is recommended that the Romanian government takes an active role in enhancing illicit drug use prevention and health promotion. Suggested means are, for instance: the enforcement of legislative means for discouraging the access to illicit drugs for young people, the inclusion of illicit drug use prevention and health education in the curriculum of junior high school, senior high school and universities, funding the development and evaluation of prevention programmes as well as the dissemination of tested effective programmes at the national level, the promotion of community programmes, and the encouragement of exchanges of good practice, guidelines and quality standards at both national and international level. Long-term strategies must be implemented based on the cooperation between governmental institutions, academic areas, non-governmental organizations and mass media (10, 23, 24).