Illegal Drugs Usage Among Saudi University Students

Illegal drug usage among Saudi university students (Online survey)
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Table of Contents
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INTRODUCTION  PAGEREF _Toc438015082 \h
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BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY  PAGEREF _Toc438015083 \h
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Search strategy and Boolean operators  PAGEREF _Toc438015084 \h
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Inclusion/ exclusion criteria  PAGEREF _Toc438015085 \h
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Literature review  PAGEREF _Toc438015086 \h
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STUDY DESIGN 10
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Sample  PAGEREF _Toc438015088 \h
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Data collection  PAGEREF _Toc438015089 \h
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Data analysis  PAGEREF _Toc438015090 \h
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Ethical issues  PAGEREF _Toc438015091 \h
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CONCLUSION  PAGEREF _Toc438015092 \h
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INTRODUCTION
The study seeks to understand the prevalence of drug abuse among Saudi Arabian university students. To ensure confidentiality and anonymity the study will use an online study, and the results will then be analyzed to determine the percentage of the students who have been involved in illegal drug abuse at one point in time. Additionally, the study will identify the most common types of drugs that are abused by the Saudi students. The study will also seek to establish whether using illegal drugs is related to drug abuse, including certain drugs being the gateway to other harder drugs. Substance abuse is a concern to public health workers since it increased the healthcare burden, while illegal drug use is associated with the growing psychological problems. In the Gulf Arabian region, the main forms of substance are tobacco and illegal drugs, heroin, hashish and to some extent alcohol (Al-Haqwi, 2010, p. 2). The rising cases of substance use is a concern, while the rapidly changing social transitions mean that there is a risk that drug abuse may become a worse public health concern if there are no measures to deal with the problem. There have been past allegations of drug trafficking of hard drugs like cocaine and hashish involving some family members of the Saudi royalty, but accessing such information is difficult as the state controls the media (O’Grady, 2015).
Students joining universities have more independence from their families, while this also provides opportunities for self-exploration. Additionally, the peer pressure and self-decision making opportunities available means that university students are at high risk of substance abuse compared to other young people who live with or near their family members. Substance abuse increases risk of dependence, and intervention programmes need to focus on strategies to eliminate substance abuse the Ministry of Health in Saudi Arabia has reported increased cases of people seeking specialized psychiatric services, and this could partly be because of substance abuse (Ministry of Health Saudi Arabia, 2012).
Even as the problem of subs...