Study on Smoking in School Students of Oujda City in Eastern Morocco-Juniper Publishers

 Juniper Publishers- Open Access Journal of Case Studies  

Study on Smoking in School Students of Oujda City in Eastern Morocco

Authored by Maamri A

Short Communication

Smoking, a real public health problem, is at the center of medical news. It is a social scourge that is increasingly alarming, particularly in developing countries and particularly in the increasingly young population [1]. It is one of the causes of preventable morbidity and mortality. Its consequences on health are currently well known. However, its motivations are codified because they are individual, hence the difficulty of standardizing the measures of withdrawal [2]. The study we carried out at the in Oujda cityis part of a descriptive study exploring the first level which aims to obtain information by means of a written questionnaire in order to identify the rate of smokers, their characteristics, determine the factors influencing smoking in their homes and give indications on the level of knowledge of young people with regard to this cosmopolitan problem. The survey covered a sample of 208 students, which represented 1/10 of the target population.

The results show that:

1. The overall rate of smokersis 13.04% of which 25% are girls.
2. 2/3 of smokers (66.66%) are regular smokers, the rest (33, 33%) are occasional smokers.
3. An introduction to smoking at a relativel yearly age, 12.5% at the age of 11 and 50% at an age between 15-16 years.
4. 91.4% of current smokers use tobacco products other than cigarettes, of which 42.85% of respondents admit they consume Chicha, while 8.57% of smokers said they are satisfied with only cigarettes.
5. Smokers are characterized by their disrupted and unsatisfactory schooling, 37.5% repeat once, 8.33% repeat several times.
6. Regarding accessibility to cigarettes:
1. 83.33% of smokers reported that they buy cigarettes in detail.
2. 37.5% of smokers reported that they provide cigarettes near high school.
7. “Pleasure” as the reason for giving up cigarettes occupies first place by 32.35% while “stress” is cited as reason for smoking second in 26.47%.
8. Regarding the role of the media and advertising, among the smoked high school students surveyed, 62.5% observed tobacco advertisements on advertising boards, newspapers or television.
9. There is à link between tobacco use among high school students and those around them, because 89% of high school students have at least one smoker in their environment and 62.5% of whom are their best friend.
10. Young peoples knowledge of smoking remains insufficient and vague:

1. 69.02% of high school students have little knowledge about tobacco-related risks.
2. More than half of high school students said they have no knowledge of the tobacco control law [3-18].

In the light of these findings and in order to safeguard the health of the population exposed directly or indirectly, we stress the urgent need to implement a tobacco control strategy that is particularly suited to young people and specifically to high school students.

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