The 13th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health

Objective: To understand the attitude, perception and behavior related to smoking of residents in urban community as a baseline for evaluating the intervention of tobacco control.

Methods: A stratified random sampling survey was carry out. Two streets in Yuexiu district in Guangzhou were randomly chosen and 1006 residents were sampled according to their gender and age. The demographic characteristics, smoking behaviors, knowledge and attitude of residents related to smoking and health were interviewed. Data were analyzed by statistical software SPSS version 12.

Results: Smoking rate of adult residents in Guangzhou is 28.4% (male 52.0%, female 6.5%). A higher smoking rate was related to the elder age, lower education, blue collar and officer and middle high family income. 24.7% of smokers (44.9% in male, 5.8 in female) were advised to quit smoking and only 12.6% (24.1% in male, 1.9% in female) ever tried to quit.More than 80% of residents knew that smoking caused lung cancer, bronchitis and other respiratory diseases but less than 30% knew that smoking related to coronary heart disease, hypertension, stroke, gastric ulcer, oral cavity cancer and laryngeal cancer. More than 90% of residents agreed that smoking and passive smoking were harmful to health, youth smoking is not good, parent should not smoke in face to children, tobacco advertising and smoking in pub should be prohibited and disagreed that smoking is manful and fashionable. However, the attitude of residents conflicted in the opinion “smoking is a personal selection and should not be interfered by others”, “Smoking alone should not be criticized”.