Smoking consumption and its associated factors among youths in a university

Abstract

The purpose of this cross-sectional descriptive study was to estimate the prevalence of current smoking among youths, and to identify the relationship between knowledge and accessibility to cigarettes with smoking status among youths studying in the 1st-4th year of a university. Data were collected through google online questionnaire from 672 youths and analyzed by descriptive statistics, simple and multiple nominal logistic regression at 5% significance level along with Crude Odds Ratio (COR) and Adjusted Odds Ratio (AOR) and its 95% confidence interval. The results showed that 4.6% of participants smoked currently, 12.4% and 83.0% were ex-smokers and non-smokers respectively. Regarding knowledge on smoking, 59.5% reported having knowledge of health effects of smoking and 52.1% reported having knowledge of tobacco control law, at good levels. However, 71.0% was easily accessed to cigarettes. Males had ever smoked and currently smoked more than females (AOR=3.02 and 10.77, 95%CI AOR: 1.68-5.42 and 3.46-33.59 respectively). Youths living with non-smoking and non-drinking peers were less likely to be ex-smoker and current smoker than those living with smoking or drinking peers (AOR=0.44 and 0.01, 95%CI AOR: 0.24-0.79 and 0.00-0.12 respectively). Youths with difficulty accessing to cigarettes were less likely to be ex-
smoker than those easily accessed (AOR=3.20, 95%CI AOR: 1.51-6.76) and youths easily accessing to cigarettes were more likely to be current smokers than youths with difficultly accessing
to cigarettes (AOR=3.50, 95%CI AOR: 1.00-12.31). However, knowledge of smoking was not significantly related to current youth smoking.