Substance and Drug consumption in schools

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION

In 2012, about 3.3 million net deaths, or 5.9% of all global deaths, were attributable to alcohol consumption. There are significant sex differences in the proportion of global deaths attributable to alcohol, for example, in 2012 7.6% of deaths among males and 4% of deaths among females were attributable to alcohol.

In 2012 139 million net DALYs (disability-adjusted life years), or 5.1% of the global burden of disease and injury, were attributable to alcohol consumption. There is also wide geographical variation in the proportion of alcohol-attributable deaths and DALYs, with the highest alcohol-attributable fractions reported in the WHO European Region.

POLICIES AND INTERVENTIONS

Alcohol policies are developed with the aim of reducing harmful use of alcohol and the alcohol-attributable health and social burden in a population and in society. Such policies can be formulated at the global, regional, multinational, national and subnational level.

Delegations from all 193 Member States of WHO reached consensus at the World Health Assembly in 2010 on a WHO Global strategy to reduce the harmful use of alcohol.

Many WHO Member States have demonstrated increased leadership and commitment to reducing harmful use of alcohol over the past years.

A significantly higher percentage of the reporting countries indicated having written national alcohol policies and imposing stricter blood alcohol concentration limits in 2012 than in 2008.

Recent estimates are that in 2008, 155 to 250 million people, or 3.5% to 5.7% of the world's population aged 15-64, used other psychoactive substances, such as cannabis, amphetamines, cocaine, opioids, and non-prescribed psychoactive prescription medication. Globally, cannabis is the most commonly used (129-190 million people), followed by amphetamine type stimulants, then cocaine and opioids.

The use of psychoactive substances causes significant health and social problems for the people who use them, and also for others in their families and communities. WHO estimated that 0.7% of the global burden of disease in 2004 was due to cocaine and opioid use, with the social cost of illicit substance use being in the region of 2% of GDP in those countries which have measured it.