Tobacco and Drug Use among Students at a Two-Year Institution in North Carolina

Objective: Limited research has addressed tobacco and drug use among community college students in the United States. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the use of tobacco and drugs among students at a community college. Secondarily, this study sought to compare student drug use between the community college and a local four year institution.

Methods: Participants (n=581) were recruited from a stratified random sample of classes. Tobacco and drug use was measured using the Core Alcohol and Drug Survey-Community College Long Form, which is a 39-item instrument, developed to assess perceptions of alcohol and drug use behaviors among community college students. Descriptive statistics were used to assess participants' frequency of tobacco and drug use and related behaviors.

Results: Participants reported more frequent use of tobacco (24% of participants used tobacco all 30 days) than all other drugs, followed by marijuana (6.8%) and amphetamines (1.0%). Excluding tobacco, the prevalence of reported drug use among participants was similar to reported drug use among students at a local four year institution. However, the frequency of reported use among community college students was higher than their counterparts' reported use (eg; 6.8% daily use of marijuana versus 2.5%). Participants' reported daily use of tobacco was three times greater than that of students at the four year institution (24% versus 8%).

Discussion: With limited research on drug use behaviors in this population, further research is needed in order to design and expand strategic prevention efforts to two year institutions.