Abstract:
Secondary school students engage in behaviors like use of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs that
compromise their health and future potentials. However, these behaviors are preventable. The
current study was designed to establish the prevalence of single and concurrent use of these drugs
among students of Kiambu and Nairobi Counties of Kenya. Multi-stage, stratified proportionate,
systematic and simple random sampling and purposive methods were used to select participating
counties (n=2), district (n=8) schools (n=71) and students (n=1389). However 1088 students were
included at analysis as some were eliminated due to inconsistent responses and non responses. Self administered questionnaire was used to collect data on demographics and alcohol, tobacco and other
drug behaviors. Frequency, percentages, Chi Square and logistic regression were used to analyze
data. Alcohol was the most used drug (23.5%) followed by khat, cigarette, smokeless tobacco and
bhang in that order. Of the current alcohol drinkers, 47.6, 33.1, 28.7 and 26.6% had also used khat,
bhang, smokeless tobacco and cigarettes respectively. From logic regressions analyses, alcohol
drinkers than abstainers were 6.198 times (95% C.I: 4.146-9.266) more likely to be khat users
whereas cigarette smokers than non-smokers were 15.264 times (95% C.I: 8.170-28.519) more
likely to use smokeless tobacco. These results provide empirical evidences for a comprehensive
prevention and intervention programs that target multiple risk behaviors to promote global health
among secondary school students.
