Drugs use in the students, unemployed and active working of 18-25 years old

Contrastingly, such surveys and studies are fewer in students in higher education: this is a population for which no national sampling frame exists and for whom there are fewer opportunities to question the individuals than in secondary schools. 

The few student surveys reveal particularly widespread use of alcohol, tobacco and cannabis in this group although these studies have a relatively low participation rate and do not enable a comparison between these students and other populations. 

Adult population representative inquiries enable us to get around this difficulty by offering large samples containing a sufficiently large number of students to be able to perform a valid statistical analysis. They also provide a control population of similar age which is not present in surveys limited to students. 

This issue of Tendances describes the use of psychoactive substances by students, the unemployed and those in active work in the 18-25 age group in France in 2005 and compares the three groups against each other: it also describes a few changes since 2000.