Many unhealthy behaviours always start during adolescence and are a source of major health challenges. Adolescence substance abuse has impact on individuals, families, and communities. Most often, it contributes to social, physical, and psychological problems. Substance abuse among adolescents is a global problem and its prevalence is alarming. Its causes are numerous and varied. One of the causes of substance abuse among adolescents is availability. When substances are available, adolescents are motivated to consume them. It is important to seek ways to curb this ill that is threatening the welfare of Cameroonians. This study sets out to ascertain the extent to which availability of substances influence substance abuse among adolescents in urban schools in Cameroon, and to determine preventive strategies. The concurrent nested mixed method research design was used to carry out the study. The Simple Random sampling was adopted in the selection of public, mission and private schools from four regions of Cameroon. As a whole, 375 students. Were selected. Purposive sampling was used to select discipline masters and guidance counsellors. A questionnaire of 10 items was used to collect data from the students and an interview guide to collect data from the discipline masters and guidance counsellors. The hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance using spearman rho test, through SPSS version 25.The findings showed that social media significantly predicted substance abuse among adolescent students (R= -0.258**, P= 0.000< 0.05). Finally, findings showed that at zero order correlation when the preventive strategies were not involved in the correlation analysis, the coefficient value was -0.374 but, when the correlation was controlled by the preventive strategies, the coefficient value increased from -0.374 to -0.908 of almost a perfect relationship (-1). The study concluded that the social media influence drug abuse among adolescent students in urban schools in Cameroon. From the study it was recommended that research be carried out to determine the effects of drugs on students’ performance, health and the society.
Adolescents, Substance abuse, drug abuse, availability of substances
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