Prevalence and factors associated with ever use of marijuana among youth in Mbale Municipality, Uganda

Abstract

Introduction and background: Marijuana is used by many people around the world, most especially the youth due to their vulnerability. The risky behavior is also widespread in Africa as evidenced by previous studies done in the continent. In Uganda however, there is limited literature on substance use in general and marijuana use in particular. The use of marijuana is associated with many negative health and socio-economic consequences, besides being a gateway towards use of other drugs. General Objective: To determine the prevalence and associated factors with marijuana use among youth in Mbale municipality so as to generate information which may be used to design appropriate program interventions for its control. Methods: It was a community cross sectional survey among youth 15 to 24 years which used one stage cluster sampling. The study applied the modified Poisson models to assess the Prevalence Ratios and association of the dependent variable and the covariates. Results: The study involved 428 youth age 15 to 24 years with a mean age of 19 years (SD 2.64), median of 19 years (IQR 9), and 50.5% were male. The study found the prevalence of ever use of marijuana of 17.3%. In the final analysis, there was no association of the prevalence of marijuana ever use with age and sex. However, associations were observed in the following variables. Youth who did not live with their parent had a prevalence of ever use of marijuana of 2.28 times as compared to those who lived with parent [APR 2.58 (1.59 – 4.16)]. The youth who hadfamily member who did not use alcohol and illicit drugs had a lower prevalence of marijuana ever use; APR of youth with family member who used alcohol was 0.47 (0.26 – 0.85) and APR of youth with family member who used illicit drugs was 0.50 (0.35 – 0.70). The youth who met with their peers several times a week had a higher prevalence of ever use of marijuana as compared to those who met their peers occasionally; [PR 5.20 (1.52 – 17.84)]. Conclusion: The findings from the study indicated that marijuana ever use among the youth was high and it was associated with family member use of illicit drugs, not living with parent and spending a lot of time with peers. This will necessitate the development of youth and parent friendly interventions targeting illicit drug use control and prevention in the study area and Uganda