Title

Substance abuse patterns and awareness among rural Indian women: A Jodhpur, Rajasthan study

Authors

Swati Sihag^1,*, Arun Kumar Sharma² & Ansuman Panigrahi³

Affiliation

¹Private Practitioner, MPH Field Data Collector, AIIMS Jodhpur 342003, India; ²Department of Community Medicine, University College of Medical Sciences, Delhi 110095, India; ³Division of Epidemiology, MD Community Medicine, Scientist- E, ICMR-RMRC Bhubaneswar, India; *Corresponding author

Email

Swati Sihag - E-mail: swati20sihag@gmail.com; swatisihagmau@gmail.com; Phone: +91 8978965434

Arun Kumar Sharma - E-mail: a.sharma@ucms.ac.in; Phone: +91 9987645678

AnsumanPanigrahi - E-mail: dr.ansuman3@gmail.com; Phone: +91 9024982456

Article Type

Research Article

Date

Received July 1, 2026; Revised July 31, 2026; Accepted July 31, 2026, Published July 31, 2026

Abstract

Continuous use of psychoactive substances can cause substance use disorder (SUD). A cross-sectional survey was conducted in rural areas of Jodhpur district for a period of 3 months i.e., September-November, 2021 in women above 18 years. The most commonly used substance was gutkha (61.0%) followed by zarda (24.0%), gul (gudakhu) (6.0%), naswar (9.5%) and mate (3.5%) were less commonly used substance. A predominance of smokeless tobacco consumption was found in our study. Thus, data shows that in spite of having strict legislation for prohibition of substance abuse, rural Indian women are still addicted with gutkha, zarda, gul and naswar.

Keywords

Substance use disorder (SUD), gutkha, zarda, gulkand, mate

Citation

Sihag et al. Bioinformation 22(7): 4288-4292 (2026)

Edited by

Ritik Kashwani

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.