Youth in Trouble: Tobacco use among School Students in Palestine

Introduction Tobacco use is the most preventable cause of death worldwide. Despite the high prevalence of tobacco use and of smoking-related diseases in Palestine, little is known about the smoking behavior of this age group. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the prevalence of cigarette smoking among adolescents attending school students in Palestine. Methods The Arabic version of the international Global School-Based Health Survey was self-administered to a stratified random sample of 363 male and 357 female students in grade 7 through 11 at four public schools in Tarqumia, Palestine. STATA version 11 was used to describe the data and to compare the association between genders. Results The results are based on the questionnaire responses of 720 study participants. Approximately one-third or 32.22% of the sample (47.38% of males and 16.81% of females) had smoked cigarettes on one or more days in the 30 days prior to survey. Cigarette smoking was higher among smokers (32.2%) than water pipes (25.6%). The majority of smokers (77.84%) started smoking at 13 years old or younger, 20.97% of smokers reported that they ever tried to stop smoking in the past 12 months, and the majority (79.03%) had no intention to stop smoking. Conclusions The results of this study may provide baseline data to develop a school-based anti-smoking health education program for public schools and encourage policy makers to ban smoking in schools by strengthening policies against smoking. 1.