Tobacco smoking among school adolescents in Northern Sabah

Abstract

Tobacco smoking in adolescent age group has become a major public health concern as it is one of the major risk factors for non-communicable diseases leading to burden of adverse health effects in their later life. Those who start smoking tobacco at an early age are more likely to develop nicotine addiction and continue smoking throughout their adulthood. The general objective of the study was to determine the prevalence of tobacco smoking, their initiation and perception towards tobacco smoking among school adolescents in Kudat District, Sabah State, Malaysia. It was a school based cross sectional descriptive study which employed a twostaged stratified random sampling method and used self-administered structured questionnaire for data collection. A total of 257 students aged between 15 to 19 years old from two upper secondary schools participated in the study. This study revealed that (26.6%) were ever smokers and (8.6%) were current smokers. The earliest age of started smoking was 7 years old and 9 years old among male and female ever smokers respectively. Majority of the respondents perceived that smoking was a bad habit which would cause environmental pollution and harmful effects on health. The most common reasons to start smoking among ever smokers were peer pressures, curiosity and experimenting and to relieve the feeling of pressured and stress. Among the current smokers, 86.4%had ever attempted to quit smoking but they failed to stop smoking because they thought smoking could give feeling pleasure (50%), relieve their anxiety or craving (27.3%) and because of peer pressures (22.7%). The findings suggested that although tobacco smoking prevalence among school adolescents in Kudat was comparatively lower than that of national prevalence reported by GYTS, there is still need for early interventions with holistic approach to prevent them from initiation and to help them for cessation of tobacco smoking.

Association between cigarette use and adolescents’ behavior

“…Regarding the use within the 30 days prior to the survey, our study observed a prevalence of around 10%, corroborating other studies conducted in Brazil 12 , Malaysia 11 and Saudi Arabia 13 .…”

“…Adolescence is an impacted phase of life, in which, as a result of the discoveries, the anxieties, due to the need to explore the unknown and to venture without worrying about the consequences, adolescents are led to adopt risk behaviors such as cigarette use 10 . The prevalence of cigarette use among adolescents in the city of Olinda was almost 30%, according to the sample studied, similar to the prevalence observed in Brazil (30%) 5 , higher than in the Brazilian Northeast (15%) 5 and in a study in Malaysia 11 .…”

Ketergantungan merokok dan hubungannya dengan tingkat motivasi berhenti merokok pada sivitas akademika Universitas Riau

“…menurut WHO prevalensi merokok pada usia sekolah lebih tinggi terutama di negara-negara berkembang yang diperkirakan 14%-29%. terdapat 1,2 juta perokok di seluruh dunia 50 % adalah berusia muda 3 Efek rokok terhadap kesehatan sudah dilaporkan sejak tahun 1964. Rokok mempunyai komposisi kimia yang sangat kompleks.…”