Canadian Student Tobacco, Alcohol and Drug Survey

Funding Body: Health Canada

Background: The Canadian Student Tobacco, Alcohol, and Drugs Survey (CSTADS) is a survey conducted in grades 6-12 (grade 6-secondary V in Quebec) every other year. CSTADS (formerly the Youth Smoking Survey (YSS)) collects data on youth substance use, and other areas identified by schools as priorities, such as bullying, mental health and how connected students feel to their school. 

CSTADS will provide Health Canada, provinces, schools, communities, and parents with timely and reliable data on tobacco, alcohol and drug use in addition to other related issues about Canadian students. School-aged children and youth are generally recognized as most at risk for experimenting with tobacco products, alcohol and drugs. With a consistent measure of student substance use it is possible to examine the factors that influence youth behaviour with respect to tobacco, alcohol and drug use.

The Propel Centre for Population Health Impact at the University of Waterloo has been centrally coordinating the implementation of CSTADS since 2004, and works with provincial partners to implement the project in each province.

Progress to Date: Data collection for 2018-2019 ended in May 2019. Data will be released by Health Canada in the summer of 2020. Several papers are in progress based on the 2016-2017 data.  Unfortunately, Health Canada has not renewed funding for so the 2020-21 cycle is not likely to take place.