Introduction:

The consumption of marijuana takes on a singular interest in the context of the university and university students, because its use could be a part of relationships with their peers.

Objective:

To describe the prevalence and examine the factors associated with marijuana use during the last thirty days, in university students in Colombia, during the year 2016.

Method:

Cross-sectional analytical study. An analysis was carried out with 9555 Colombian university students. The university student who stated that he had used it during the last thirty (30) days was considered a marijuana user. The studied variables were sex, age, perception of the economic situation, academic and disciplinary problems in high school, and the characteristics of parental control. For analysis, the prevalence of marijuana was reported for each of the characteristics studied. The associations were estimated through generalized linear models; all analyzes were adjusted by the expansion factor.

Results:

It was found that 9.7% (95% CI 9.1%-10.4%) had used marijuana in the last thirty days; men (OR 2.23 CI95% 1.92 - 2.59), those who reported not having parental control over friends (OR 2.32 CI95% 1.58-3.41) and who confessed to having had disciplinary problems in high school (OR 3.35 CI95% 2.67-4.19) were associated with marijuana use.

Conclusions:

The prevalence of marijuana use in university students is high, compared to other countries in the region. They highlight characteristics such as the presence of academic or disciplinary problems in high school, as well as poor parental control; they showed that they had a greater relationship with the use of marijuana among the university students surveyed.

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