Title : Substances abuse among Czech teenagers with regard to the quality of their school environment
Abstract:
Many of those people who smoke tobacco, drink alcohol or use marijuana in adulthood start using them in their teens. The tradition of using these substances is quite strong in the general population in the Czech Republic, and the level of tolerance of such behaviour is also very high in society. In addition, the legislation is one of the less stringent in Europe. For many children, it is therefore not a problem to obtain alcohol or cigarettes. This contributes to the high levels of alcohol and tobacco use among teenagers. Although this is a long-standing problem, we still do not know all its causes and contexts. Therefore, I decided to focus on the spatial aspect of the problem. Children spend a significant part of their lives in and around school, so it is this environment that I will focus on in my paper. I will attempt to answer questions about how important the school and its environment are in students' use of risky substances, whether teenagers who are more satisfied with their school are less likely to drink alcohol and smoke tobacco and marijuana or whether the risk behaviors of students differ in different types of developments.
This article analyses the rates of alcohol, tobacco and marijuana use among Czech adolescents in relation to the quality of the neighbourhood around their school. The data come from an online survey of 9th grade primary school pupils in 19 schools in different parts of the two largest cities in the Czech Republic, Prague and Brno, conducted between November 2018 and October 2019.
