Population Medicine (Oct 2022)

Cigarette smoking curiosity and its correlates among neversmoking US middle and high school adolescents: Analysis of the 2020 National Youth Tobacco Survey

  • Olayinka S. Ilesanmi,
  • Aanuoluwapo A. Afolabi

DOI
https://doi.org/10.18332/popmed/155012
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 4, no. October
pp. 1 – 7

Abstract

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Introduction The tobacco epidemic is driven by the increasing number of adolescents and youths in the population of smokers. This study aimed to describe cigarette smoking curiosity and its correlates among US middle and high school adolescents that had never smoked using the 2020 National Youth Tobacco Survey. Methods A stratified, three-stage cluster sampling technique was used to enroll 14531 middle and high school students from 180 schools in the US. Cigarette smoking curiosity was measured using the dichotomized responses for the question on curiosity to smoke cigarettes. Data on respondents’ perception of the harm contained in cigarettes, and sources of exposure to cigarette smoking (peer group or audiovisual) were also collected. Data analysis was done using STATA version 17. Stepwise and binary logistic regression analyses were conducted. Statistical significance was set at p<0.05. Results Overall, the mean age of the 14531 respondents was 14.31 ± 2.09 years, and the mean age of the 12837 (87.86%) respondents that had never smoked was 14.15 ± 2.06 years. Among the 12837 (87.86%) youths that had never smoked a cigarette, 1500 (11.68%) were curious about smoking a cigarette. Among the 1709 (54.72%) respondents in middle school, 796 (53.14%) had a cigarette smoking curiosity, and of the 1413 (45.28%) respondents in high school, 702 (46.86%) had a cigarette smoking curiosity (χ2=2.921; p=0.047). In the final model, youths enrolled in middle school had 21% fewer odds to develop a cigarette smoking curiosity compared to those in high school (AOR=0.7848; 95% CI: 0.7159–0.8604, p<0.001). Conclusions There is a high prevalence of cigarette smoking curiosity among US middle and high school students. Antitobacco messages should be designed to include in smoking prevention programs, as well as smoking refusal skills training among adolescents.

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