Smoking Habits of Students in the Faculty of Medicine and Allied Science, King Abdulaziz University

Abstract

The participating subjects were students of the Faculty of Medicine and Allied Sciences with the range of 18 to 26 years old. An experimental design with prestructured questionnaire, and simple random sampling was administered to 226 participants. Out of 226 respondents, 58 (25.6%) were current smokers. Of those that indicated that they were currently smoking 53 (23.5%) were male and 5 (2.2%) were female. The 19-24 years old age group exhibited the highest prevalence of smoking. Most of the respondents were cigarette smokers and appeared to be light smokers consuming less than 10 cigarettes per day. Also, moassel and shisha smokers were light smokers consuming less than 7 moassel and shisha per week. It was found that 82,8% of the current smokers are aware of the hazards of smoking and 89.6% of them expressed a desire to cease smoking. The conclusion was that smoking is prevalent among one quarter of the students of the Faculty of Medicine and Allied Sciences. Smoking habits were significantly higher among males (P < 0.05) especially those over 21 years of age and whose fathers are smokers (P < 0.01).