The main objective of the research was to examine the associations between problematic alcohol use, tobacco use and cannabis use among Czech and Slovak university students during the early COVID-19 pandemic. The research sample consisted of 1422 participants from the Czech Republic (CZ) and 1677 from the Slovak Republic (SK). The analyses included university students who drank alcohol in the past year (CZ: 1323 (93%); SK: 1526 (91%)). Regarding the analysed measures, the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) and its subscales, the Glover-Nilsson Smoking Behavioral Questionnaire (GN-SBQ) and the Cannabis Abuse Screening Test (CAST) were selected to identify substance-related behaviour. Age, gender and residence were included in the analyses as socio-demographic variables. Correlation and regression analyses were used to achieve the main objective of the research. The main results revealed that the use of tobacco and cannabis were positively associated with alcohol use disorders among Czech and Slovak university students. Additionally, males were more likely to report alcohol use disorders. In the Czech Republic, it was found that students living in dormitories were characterized by a lower AUDIT score. The opposite situation was found in the Slovak Republic. Czech and Slovak policy-makers are encouraged to develop alcohol use prevention programs for university students in line with these findings.

Center for Applied Economic Research Faculty of Management and Economics Tomas Bata University in Zlín Mostní 5139 760 00 Zlín Czech Republic

Faculty of Management University of Prešov in Prešov Konštantínova 16 080 01 Prešov Slovakia

Faculty of Mining Ecology Process Control and Geotechnologies Technical University of Košice Letná 9 042 00 Košice Slovakia

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