[Study on the status of cigarette smoking in youths from three cities of China]

To understand the smoking status and related factors in middle school students from Hangzhou, Taiyuan and Guiyang cites.

A cross-sectional survey was adopted with 11 171 students randomly selected through a stratified cluster sampling method. A self-administrated questionnaire survey was employed, which including the information of respondents' background characteristics, cigarette smoking, exposure to tobacco advertisement, recognition on indirect tobacco advertisement, exposure to second-hand smoke, related knowledge, attitude and perceptions towards tobacco use etc. Data was weighted by the amount of male and female students in junior high, senior high and vocational middle schools in the above said three cities and was analyzed by complex sampling analysis methods of SPSS 15.0. Confidence Intervals of each indicator were used to evaluate for difference between groups. Logistic regression was used to explore the potential factors associated with smoking in youths.

The overall attempted smoking rate of the three cities was 26.2% (95%CI: 23.6 - 29.1), with male as 39.9% and female 12.5% respectively. The current smoking rate was 12.5% (95%CI: 11.1 - 14.2) with boys as 21.9% and girls as 3.2%. The smoking rate were different among three kinds of schools, with vocational school was the highest (25.8%), followed by senior high (7.9%) and junior high (6.3%). The rate of smoking was different among cities, lower with better economic situation. The average age of debut was 11.9 years old. Nearly half of the students who smoked had no intention to quit. Factors that associated with smoking would include: having or wishing to have tobacco promotion products, having friends or families who smoke, their friends' attitude towards smoking behavior, and misconceptions about smoking such as underestimate the harm of smoking and the difficulty of quitting, realizing that smoking was an important way for social contact, and to be seen as being matured etc.

Boys are much more likely than girls to smoke cigarette. Smoking prevalence is much higher in low-income cities. Additianally, it should be concerned that girls has higher smoking rate than female adults. It is urgent for tobacco control among adolescents, especially in low-income area in China.