Background: Addiction is a serious social problem that can effect on the future of the youth as the most valuable asset for every nation. It threatens not only the lives of millions of people of the world, but also ruins many social values and norms. The best way to confront with addiction is prevention and teenagers should be educated about complications of drugs by the experts and researchers at their schools.
Objectives: The aim of this study was to determine the knowledge and attitudes of male high-school students of the harms of Addiction in Urmia, Iran.
Patients and Methods: This is a cross sectional study in which, 306 male students from high schools in Urmia city were selected based on simple sampling by using a demographic and researcher-designed questionnaire. The validity of the questionnaire both in terms of content and appearance was verified by the board members of the Urmia University of Medical Sciences, and the reliability with the internal compatibility index.
Results: Most of the samples stated that they told their parents about their new friends, as an indication of the families' control on them and believed that curiosity is an important factor in addiction, and declared that media's depiction of the harms of addiction has biased them against drug use. Also, it was obvious that the samples' demographic characteristics, including age, neighborhood, previous grade average, number of siblings and parents' education, did not have a significant correlation with their knowledge of and attitude to addiction (P > 0.05).
Conclusions: Based on the results, it is recommended to enhance students' knowledge; about factors that may encouraged them to be addicted; and educational programs in the media be reinforced. In addition, the authorities should support the youth by screening programs and the establishment of counseling settlements for identify and eliminating the contributory factors to drug addiction.