The 13th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health

Objective: The National Cancer Institute of the Brazilian Ministry of Health participates in the Global Youth Tobacco Survey (with US CDC and WHO) to, among other issues, monitor motivation to quit smoking among smokers in the 7th and 8th grades as well as 1st year High School students in 14 state capitals

Methods: Survey of the target population (described above). The sampling was determined in two stages: 1st selection of schools using proportional probability based on school size and second, we selected classes. All students from the selected classes answered the standard, self-administered, questionnaire. Sampling and data analysis were done at the US CDC http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/global/gyts/GYTS_intro.htm#Methodology) using EpiInfo 2002.

Results: Final simple size was 19,217 students from 339 public and private schools. The percentage of smokers, defined as having smoked at least one day in the past 30 days, the proportion ranged from 8.3% (95% CI 6.1% to10.5%) to 22.1% (95% CI 17.3% to 26.9%). When looking at smokers who had moved from experimentation to addiction, we used WHO's definition of smoking 100 or more cigarettes in lifetime – there was a range of 11.5% to 35.3% of students that fell into this definition; the range of students smokers that wanted to quit was from 49.9% to 87.8%.