INFORMATION IS A VALUABLE TOOL FOR SMOKING PREVENTION

Tatiana I. ANDREEVA, Galina A. ANANJEVA, Luisa K. GALLYAMOVA

BACKGROUND. Youth smoking prevention is a difficult area of tobacco control, where most measures intended as preventive occur to be ineffective or counterproductive.
AIM. The survey of teenagers was aimed to explore determinants of youth smoking.

SETTING. Teenage clubs in Tatarstan Republic (Russian Federation) involved in pilot prevention project, 529 participants, 11-17 years old within 28 clubs of 6 cities took part in a survey.

METHODS. Binary logistic regression was used to explore determinants of youth ever smoking, 30-days smoking and daily smoking.

RESULTS. Along with associations obvious for parental and peer smoking, ever smoking and recent smoking was significantly associated with knowledge about tobacco health effects and smoking perception expressed by teenagers.

Beliefs that ‘smoking influences only lungs’, that ‘no danger is associated with smoking for only two years’, that ‘light cigarettes are less harmful’ were significantly associated with ever and recent smoking, all adjusted for age. Some of these beliefs were also associated with higher risk of passive smoking, as was the idea that smoking reduces body weight.

Yet certain ideas like ‘quitting smoking is difficult’, ‘ETS is dangerous’, ‘smoking in public places should be forbidden’, were associated with lower risks of smoking.

The importance of beliefs was seen only on the stage of experimenting with smoking and their influence was no more obvious on the stage of daily smoking establishment.
CONCLUSIONS. Information about tobacco health influence when digested by teenagers is a valuable smoking prevention tool. Counter-advertising and media campaigns based on truthful health effect information are expected to be effective to reduce smoking initiation in Russia.

FUNDING INFORMATION. Pilot prevention project and survey within it was supported by Tatarstan Republic local authority.