Objective

The present study aims to identify the prevalence and factors associated with cigarette experimentation among adolescents.

Method

Cross-sectional, descriptive and analytical epidemiological study carried out with a simple random sample of students aged 14-19 years enrolled in public high schools in the urban area of the city of Jequié, in the state of Bahia. After the A self-administered questionnaire of voluntary completion was used after the participants (or their parents/guardians in the case of participants under 18) signed the free informed consent form. Data was entered with Epi DATA software and SPSS software was used to calculate the prevalence ratio and perform Poisson regression.

Results

The study sample consisted of 765 adolescents, as follows: 59.9% were female individuals, 80.4% were non-white, 71.4% did not have a paid job, 74% lived in low-income families, and 37.9% used alcohol. The mean age was 16.55 years (sd ± 1.33) years. The prevalence of smoking experimentation was 22.4%. The variables: parental smoking (PR = 1.57, 95% CI: 1.15-2.12), smoking friends (RP = 2.15, 95% CI: 1.56-2.95), alcohol drinking (OR = 2.05, 95% CI: 1.46-2.88), and age group (RP = 1.36, 95% CI: 1.01-1.84) were the best predictors of the risk for experimentation with cigarettes among high school students.

Conclusions

The prevalence of experimentation was 22.4%, and the variables that best predicted the likelihood of experimenting with tobacco among high school students were smoking parents, smoking friends, alcohol use and aged 17-19 years.

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