Abstract

BACKGROUND: Alcohol is the most widely used substance of abuse among youths in Nigerian. Currently, underage drinking has become a serious public health problem in most colleges and despite the health and safety risk, consumption of alcohol is rising. Having recourse to the public health objective on alcohol by the World Health organization, which is to reduce the health burden caused by the harmful use of alcohol, thereby saving lives and reducing injuries, this study explored the nature of alcohol use among college students, binge drinking and the consequences of alcohol consumption. Secondary school students are in a transition developmentally and this comes with its debilitating effects such as risky alcohol use which affects their health and educational attainment (Loukas, Cance, & Batanova, 2016; Adekeye, 2012).

METHODS: This is a cross-sectional study of 809 college students (ages 14–20 years) using the research survey method. For data collection, an adapted and validated version of the youth questionnaire on underage drinking was employed. 

RESULTS: Bivariate analysis found that more male students consume beer and spirits while wine was the reported preference of female students. Heavy episodic drinking (HED) was discovered among few male students while 50.2% of the sample had their first drink between ages 14 and 17. 81% of the sample had ever drank alcohol while more than half (65%) of the sample consume alcohol once in a month. Further analyses show prevalence of alcohol consumption, strategies to reducing alcohol use, reasons for underage drinking and effects of alcohol consumption.

CONCLUSIONS: A majority of underage students supported increasing efforts to control underage drinking. The students reported that an effective approach to decreasing alcohol use could be public presentations by people who have been seriously hurt or impaired by alcohol use. This will be a veritable public health intervention.

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