Abstract:

Introduction; Marijuana abuse among adolescents continues to be a growing concern globally. Considerable variation in the prevalence of legal and illegal substance use among adolescents exists between countries. Marijuana use among college and university students remains an important area of research due to the implications of early dependence on the future of young people. They are a particularly high-risk group for substance-related problems

Objectives: The study aims to determine prevalence and precipitating factors regarding marijuana use among medical students at CUHAS Mwanza.

Methods: This was a cross sectional study involving 384 medical students from the Catholic University of Health and Allied Science, Mwanza Tanzania which was conducted from May 2023 to September 2023. Socio-demographic and other relevant information was collected by using structured questionnaires. Data was entered into SPSS version 27.0 for further analysis.

Results: A total of 384 participants were included in the study, where the mean age was 22 ± 3, majority of the participants were males (51.6%) where by the reviewed medical education status was 17.4% Year I, 28.1% Year II, 14.6% Year III, 20.1% Year IV and 19.8% Year V. From the total participants prevalence of Marijuana users was 50.3% in different times while the rest of the participants were non marijuana users, the use of marijuana was mainly attributed by curiosity (17.7%), peer pressure (23.2%) and coping with anxiety (9.4%)

Conclusion: This study shows that there is high prevalence of marijuana use among medical students in the last year indicated by about 19.3% of students to have used more than twice in last 12 months and 50.3% of students have used marijuana in different times of their lives, And the main reason being peer pressure and curiosity. It was shown that there was high prevalence which was seen in fourth year medical students which was attributed by stress that was caused mainly by studies and family problems.