Smoking among secondary school students in Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia

This study was done to determine the prevalence of smoking and factors influencing cigarette smoking among secondary school students in Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia. This is a cross-sectional school survey conducted on 4500 adolescent students based on a structured questionnaire. Data was collected using the supervised self-administered questionnaire the Youth Risk Behaviour Surveillance in the Malaysian National Language Bahasa Malaysia. The prevalence of smoking among the students was 14.0%. About a third of the students (37.8%) started smoking at 13 to 14 years of age. The prevalence of smoking among the male students was higher (26.6%) compared to the female students (3.1%). Adolescent smoking was associated with (1) sociodemographic factors (age, ethnicity, rural/urban status); (2) environmental factors (parental smoking, staying with parents); (3) behavioural factors (playing truant and risk-taking behaviours such as physical fighting, drug use, alcohol use, sexual activity, lack of seatbelt use, riding with a drunk driver); (4) lifestyle behaviours (being on diet and lack of exercise); (5) personal factors (feeling sad and suicidal behaviours). In conclusion, smoking is a major problem among Malaysian adolescents. Certain groups of adolescents tend to be at higher risk of smoking. This problem should be curbed early by targeting these groups of high risk adolescents.