The 13th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health

Objective: Smoking is major preventabile cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. As the onset usually happens in adolescence, the key strategy to reduce related morbidity and mortality is prevention of smoking among schoolchildren. The objective of this study was to explore perception of tobacco by adolescents in both school curriculum and school facilities.

Methods: The survey was conducted among 2938 adolescents of both gender in Novi Sad by nonymously self-administrating Global Youth Tobacco Survey questionairre.

Results:

There were 45,9% boys and 54,1% girls in the poll. About half of questioned experimented with cigarette, but 22% adolescents already consider themselves as smokers, predomonantly girls (p=0.000). There was no statistical difference between smokers and nosmokers regarding perception of school lessons about harms of smoking, but older girls had better perception about those topics. During the classes, almost 39.6% of adolescents see teachers almost every day and 38.7% occasionally to smoke in school facilities, statistically significant more older adolescents and teen smokers. Students smoking in school facilities are more often percepted by older girls and smokers themselves. The problem of adolescent tobacco use is obvious, especially among girls. There is also a problem about misperception of smoking harms in tobacco prevention lessons, as well as widespread tobacco use by both teachers and students in school facilities. Therefore it is neccesary to implement more effective school-based tobacco control program and encourage nonsmokers to stay that way, and to motivate current smokers to attend some of the smoking cessation programs available in primary health centers.