Koushal Dave, Pawan K Sharma and Rimple Sharm

Substance abuse is one of its complicated and multifactorial phenomenon with which many societies are suffering and prevalence of adolescent's substance abuse is a significant public health problem. The aim of this study is to assess the knowledge towards specific substance abuse among adolescent school children. Non experimental descriptive research design was adopted and stratified random sampling technique was used. 100 adolescent school children studying in 9th to 12th class of different schools were enrolled. Objective based tools i.e. demographic and assessment of knowledge towards substance abuse were used. Data analysis was done using STATA 11.1, with the level of significance at p < 0.05. It is found that adolescences had average knowledge towards caffeine abuse and had good knowledge towards alcohol and tobacco abuse. Adolescents who belonged to the age group of 16-18 years had highest knowledge, females had more knowledge than males, and students of class 11th had better knowledge. Furthermore, adolescents who acquired knowledge by newspaper & magazines had maximum mean knowledge score towards substance abuse.