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Article Title: A Comparative Analysis of Drug Use and Abuse among Male and Female Secondary School Students in Kisii County, Kenya
by Atemi Grace Ondieki and Ondieki Zacharia Mokua

Abstract:
The study investigated and made a comparison on the prevalence of drug use and abuse among male and female secondary school adolescents in Kiamokama Division, Kisii District. Simple random sampling was used to select five schools out of the eleven schools in the Division. The accessible population was 120 Form Four students in the selected schools. A questionnaire was administered to students with the help of two teachers in every school. An interview guideline was used to collect information from teachers. Observation and document analysis was also used in data collection. Data collected was cleaned, coded and entered in SPSS computer program where it was analyzed. A descriptive approach was used in analysis to make inferences and conclusions to the study findings. It was found that boys were the predominant drug users who made up at least two thirds of drug users in the hard drugs category. The majority of the users of alcohol (the most used hard drug) were boys. The highest proportion of girls in drugs was observed in cigarettes and miraa, where they constituted one third of the users. All those that had used heroin were boys. The author recommends that students need to be properly educated on the negative effects on drug use. They also need to be put to light on factors that lead to drug abuse and the effective precautionary measures they should take. The study contributes useful knowledge that can be used by education stakeholders to eradicate and/or deal with the problems associated with illicit drug use and abuse among students and young people in general

Keywords: addiction, drug, use, abuse, male, female, secondary school students, illicit drugs, thrill seekers, kisii, Kenya

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