Evaluation of Tehran Pre-university Student's Awareness of Effects of Cigarette Smoking

This project evaluated the level of awareness and attitude of students regard-ing the effects of cigarette consumption and its relation to cigarette smoking of pre-univer- sity students. Research data was collected through a demographic and information question-naire implemented on 4023 pre-university students (2018 girls and 2005 boys). The stu-dents were selected by random cluster sampling from 64 schools in the city of Tehran. 42% of the girls and 39.5% of the boys attributed at least one of the four effects of alleviation of worry and anxiety, mind strengthening, lessening fatigue, and modulating anger to cigarettes. The most prevalent belief in both groups was anger modulation. There was a significant correlation between the number of beliefs and also the presence of each of the spoken beliefs with dependence and experience of cigarette consumption in both groups of girls and boys. Only 28% of the boys and 30.8% of the girls were aware of all the side effects of cigarettes like cancer, reduction of life expectancy, heart and blood ill-nesses, premature aging and skin wrinkling, peptic ulcer, and endangerment of bystan-ders’ health. There was a significant negative correlation between the awareness of the number of spoken effects of cigarette consumption and knowledge of each of the effects with dependence and experience of cigarette consumption; this correlation was stronger in girls. This study showed that awareness of harmful consequences of cigarette consump- tion may keep off adolescents and youth from this substance or reduce its consumption.