Background: The use of substances has become one of the rising major public health problems in Ethiopia. The challenge with substance use behavior is that it may precede or proceed other risky behavior for the health of individuals and the community. Poly substance use also may worsen such consequences on the users and others around. The purpose of this study is therefore to estimate the magnitude and predictors of poly substance use behavior among male population in Ethiopia.

Methods: Data for this study came from the 2016 Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey (EDHS). For this particular analysis, we extracted 7,931 males who are at least one current substance (cigarette/alcohol/chat) users from the 12,688 total national male participants of the EDHS. Accordingly, further analysis (logistic regression) was done to identify predictors of poly substance use behavior and statistical significance was declared at p value 0.05. Permission to use the EDHS data set was obtained from the DHS program. 

Results: Among the total of 12,688 men sample of the 2016 EDHS in Ethiopia, 7, 931 (62.51%) of them were currently using at least one substance (cigarette/alcohol/chat). Among the region distribution of current substance users showed that Amhara (18.5%), Tigray (14.2%) and Oromia (12.8%) had the top three highest percent of substance users respectively. Among the current any substance users, 15.0% were using at least cigarette among which 11.2% were daily users. About twenty (19%) of the current substance users in Ethiopia were poly substance users. Majority of the participants were alcohol only users (53.1%) followed by Chat only users (25.9%). Smoking and chewing chat only was the highest two substances used (8.2%). Poly substance use behavior was predicted by region, residence, educational status, religion, wealth status, marital status, age, family size and media exposure

Conclusion: Poly substance use behavior among males was high in Ethiopia. The socio-demographic and access to media factors were predictors of poly substance use behavior. Therefore, there is a need to investigate underlying structural, policy and behavioral determinants which predisposes such segments of the population at increased risk of poly substance use behavior