Use of Smokeless Tobacco among Secondary School Male Students in Abha City, KSA
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- Category: Vol. 79, March 2011
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Use of Smokeless Tobacco among Secondary School Male Students in Abha City, KSA, ABDULLAH M. AL-SHAHRANI and HASSAN M. AL-MUSA
Abstract
Objectives: To assess knowledge, attitude and practice of male secondary school students toward use of smokeless tobacco, and to assess factors that might motivate smokeless tobacco consumption in Abha City, KSA.
Methods: A cross sectional study included A special questionnaire was designed for data collection during inter-viewing 400 male students at secondary schools in Abha City, KSA.
Results: The prevalence of currently use smokeless tobacco among the students was 22.8%, most of them (87.9%) started using it before the age of 17 years. Use of smokeless tobacco is significantly higher among those who do not know that smokeless tobacco contains nicotine and causing addic-tion, and those who did not receive health education at school. Most students were motivated to use smokeless tobacco by their friends at school (68.1%) or a member of their family (35.2%). Planning to cut down using smokeless tobacco was reported by (28.6%) while (25.3%) of users feel guilty when using it, and (54.9%) feel annoyed when asked to stop using it.
Conclusions: Smokeless tobacco is commonly used by secondary school students. The decision to start using smoke-less tobacco is strongly influenced by friends and family members who use it.
Recommendations: The family should be motivated to play a pivotal role to avoid tobacco use among children. Edu-cational curricula at schools should include knowledge about smokeless tobacco and its health hazards.