Popularizing smoking among academic youth during the first years of studies

For several years there have been systematic organization and educational activities carried out in many countries, also in Poland, aimed at large groups of people in order to limit the frequency of smoking. Living in environment free from tobacco smoke is a condition of maintaining good health of an individual and human population. The results of research show that it is very difficult to free oneself from smoking. Therefore, preventive actions among high school and academic youth must be particularly intensified. Health behaviour of post graduates of medical departments who will take up work in health centers in the future will be particularly under scrutiny, and there will be many followers among patients, too. The aim of this work was to establish participation of the smoking people among the first year students, during the first two months of 2008. In March 2008 all of the students of the first year of stationary and non-stationary divisions of the Department of Health Science at the Medical University of Lodz took part in the research, using an auditory survey. In total, there were 512 people on students lists. 479 of them took part in the research (93.5%). Among the 479 respondents, 34.2% (164) of the tested admitted to smoking and 65.8% (315 people) answered that in January and February 2008 they did not smoke a single cigarette. Among 308 stationary female and male students, those who smoked (88 people) made up for 28.6%, whereas among the 171 of the non-stationary tested students, those who smoked made up for 44.4% (76 people). In the group of smokers 53.7% (88 people) were the stationary students and 46.3% (76 people) were the non-stationary ones. Participation of smoking students in January and February 2008 among all of the students at the Department of Health Science was very high--tobacco smoke was inhaled by every third student.