Background:

studies carried out in the world express the prevalence of drug use with a predominance of alcohol, tobacco and tranquilizers in the university student sector, with a health risk for thousands of young people.

Objective:

to characterize behavioral elements related to the consumption of legal drugs in university students in the northern area of Palma Soriano.

Methods:

a retrospective descriptive study was carried out in the period from January to December 2017. Theoretical methods were used: analysis-synthesis, induction-deduction and historical-logical; Empirical: the survey in the form of a questionnaire and mathematical-statistics for absolute and relative values.

Results:

ages from 17 to 19 years prevailed at the beginning of legal drug use, with prevalence of the female sex, the main motivation was stress, the most frequent on weekends, the most consumed drug was coffee and the most frequent way of this consumption was in social meetings with friends.

Conclusions:

regardless of the fact that the drugs used by the sampled university students are of legal use, they are alerted about their consumption, since the damage they report to health is well recognized; the criterion of the application of health promotion and prevention activities is imposed to combat the harmful consequences that would result from its continued consumption.

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