Changes in first-year pharmacy students’ awareness of drug abuse prevention

Abstract

The Faculty of Pharma Sciences, Teikyo University conducts a series of surveys to examine students’ awareness of drug abuse prevention. This paper reports the 5-year (FY2012–2016) results obtained in first-year pharmacy students. Among these students, 12.3% regarded dangerous (illicit) drugs as <easily available> despite the absence of stores selling them. As for the recognition of such drugs, the rate of answering <It is absolutely wrong and impermissible to use them> decreased from 91.0 to 94.2% in FY2014–FY2015 to 89.4% in 2016. A similar tendency was observed for questions regarding the recognition of marijuana. The most frequent drug abuse-related information source was <elementary, junior, and senior high school classes> (80.9–89.1%) in all years, followed by <TV> (44.2–56.1%); the latter suggested a marked influence of the media on the students, particularly in FY2014, as a hit-and-run car accident associated with illicit herbal drug use occurred in Ikebukuro during that period.