The consequences of drug use among college students are of the highest concern to public health authorities. A partial
analysis conducted as part of the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC) revealed
that 45.8% of American college students had some type of psychiatric disorder, and alcohol-related disorders were the
most common. According to this large-scale epidemiological study, college students were significantly more likely than
their non-college-attending peers to have an alcohol use disorder. This result was also significantly for alcoholdependence, but not for abuse.6 Furthermore, college students are twice as likely to develop alcohol- and drug-related disorders than the rest of the American population.6-8 In this regard, the prevalence of alcohol abuse and dependence over 12 months was 7.8 and 12.5% among college students, respectively, and the corresponding values for US adults were 4.7 and 3.8%, respectively.6-8 The 12-month drug abuse and dependence rates among college students were 4.2 and 1.4%,
respectively, whereas the corresponding values in U.S. adults were 1.4 and 0.6%, respectively.