Attitude of Tobacco Users among 13–18 Year School Going Children of Urban Meerut Yadav Girjesh1,*, Bansal Rahul2, Sharma Saurabh3, Shukla Arvind Kumar4 1Junior Resident III, Department of Community Medicine, Subharti Medical College, Meerut, UP 2Prof. & Head, Department of Community Medicine, Subharti Medical College, Meerut, UP 3Assistant Professor, Department of Community Medicine, Subharti Medical College, Meerut, UP 4Assistant Professor, Department of Community Medicine, Subharti Medical College, Meerut, UP *Corresponding Author: Dr. Girjesh Yadav Junior Resident III, Department of Community Medicine, Subharti Medical College, Meerut, UP E-mail: sartajsaleem@gmail.com
Online published on 3 April, 2018. Abstract Introduction Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable deaths world over, more so in developing countries. Tobacco use is a male dominant phenomenon among children and adolescent in India. Most of them in developing countries because of increasing level of use and dire public health implication, tobacco use among people have been referred to as both a pediatric disease and a pediatric epidemic. Aims & Objective To find out the attitude of Tobacco users among 13–18 year school going children of urban Meerut. Methods A Cross-sectional study was conducted among school going children between 13–18 years of age in Urban Meerut Two government and two private schools CBSC affiliated were selected randomly by a list of all the schools made available by listing all the schools in Meerut. sample size was 800 and equally distributed 400 government & 400 private school. results In the study, 15 years (34.1%) was the most common age, male predominance ((59.6%) was observed as compared to female (40.4%) amongst study population. Hindu (76.9%) was the most common religion, nuclear family was the most common type of family (78.5%). 37.4% of study population has a family size of 5 members followed by family size of 4 members (32.6%). 80.1% of study population belongs to urban area. The early age of initiation underscores the urgent need to intervene and protect this vulnerable group from falling prey to this addiction. In our study 62.3% of the study population believes smoking cigarette looks less attractive. 51.5% of the study population had perception regarding tobacco user as stupid. In our study, 80.90% of opinion of raise cost of tobacco product use by government will control it. 35.90% of study population decreased use was the most common impact of no tobacco advertisement by the print media and electronic media. Top Keywords School going children, Attitude of tobacco, smoking, smokeless. Top |