ABSTRACT
The goal of this paper is to estimate the phenomenon of consuming psychoactive substances such as: alcohol, nicotine, caffeine and narcotics among the students of Poznan's universities, and evaluating the level of consciousness of the dangers resulting from using those substances. The authors wanted to check, whether the consumption of psychoactive substances depends on such traits as: sex, place of living, subjective evaluation of one's health, the type of university they attend, and whether the respondents think that the knowledge passed onto them on the universities about the dangers resulting from consuming such substances is sufficient, and whether they know how to help an addicted person. The research, done with the use of a survey, was conducted among 504 students from six universities in Poznan: Medical University (16.7% of the respondents), University School of Economics (15.3%), University School of Agriculture (162%), University School of Physical Education (16.1%), Poznan Technical University School (184%) and Poznan University (17.3%). The research has shown, that the most of the students consume alcohol (81.1% of the respondents), followed by caffeine (75.8%). The third place was taken by narcotics (38%), and the fourth by cigarettes (20%). Most people that smoke are the ones that are renting an apartment by themselves. No statistic difference was found in the usage of cigarettes between women and men, nor was there a relation between the subjectively evaluated state of one's health, or the attended university (the students of the Medical University smoke as much as the others). The average ago of the initiation into tobacco usage of the respondents was 17 years of age, which is a time when one doesn't have a legal right to obtain cigarettes.
