**Abstract**

In South Africa, substance rehabilitation centers found alcohol as the primary substance abuse in eight out of the nine provinces. This study aimed to investigate the prevalence of alcohol use and associated risk factors among University of Limpopo students with mean age of 21.5 years. This was a cross-sectional study and constituted a total of 500 female students and 417 male students from the University of Limpopo. Logistic regression was used to calculate the association between alcohol consumption and its predictors. Information about their alcohol consumption, the type of alcohol and the practice related to alcohol consumption was collected using a validated questionnaire. Tobacco and marijuana product use were significantly (P < 0.05) associated with alcohol use among University of Limpopo students for unadjusted (OR ranges 4.31 95%CI 2.71 6.87 to 4.92 95%CI 3.16 7.70) and after adjusting for age gender and amount of money deposited into the student account by the bursary scheme (OR ranges from 4.14 95%CI 2.59 6.62 to 4.50 95%CI 2.87 7.06). Tobacco product use, marijuana use and enhancing interpersonal relationships are major risk factors associated to current alcohol use. Future studies are required to investigate the development of lifestyle and cardiovascular disease over time among University of Limpopo students.

**Keywords:** alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, students, university of Limpopo
