TOBACCO CONSUMPTION PATTERNS AMONG ADOLESCENTS IN A RURAL COMMUNITY: A CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDY ON INFLUENCES, HABITS, AND GENDER DISPARITIES

Abstract

The adolescent develops his habit, attitude and behaviour on the basis of influence from surrounding social environment, which constitute family members, neighbours, relatives, teachers and later on from peers and society. Term "Substance use" includes use of
legitimate substances like tobacco, alcohol or diversion of prescription drugs as well as illicit substances like Cannabis (Ganja), Cocaine, hallucinogens, I n h a l a n t s, tranquilizers, s e d a t i v e s and intra-venous drugs. Among all types of the known substances used, tobacco use is the commonest and most widely distributed across the world. Method: The present study was a community based cross sectional study which was conducted in eight adopted villages for community health care programme. All adolescent in the age group of 10-19 years of study villages and permanent resident of Study village. Information regarding local available tobacco products was collected. The age verification was confirmed via parents. After explaining the purpose of survey and taking the permission from parents, the importance of their cooperation for the success of study was emphasized and interview were conducted in absence of
family members for maintenance of confidentiality. The visit of adolescents was organized in morning or evening hours in working days and according to availability of study subjects on holidays. The adolescents were initially briefed for 5 minutes regarding the procedure. The printed pre-designed, pre-tested, pre-coded semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect the information. Data collected were entered into worksheet of Microsoft excel-2013 on same day.
Results: Age wise distribution of 485 adolescents having 63.29% male (n=307) and 36.70% female (n= 178) participants in the present study. Mean age of study participants were 14.35 years and average age of male and female participants were 14.47 and 13.93 years
individually. Most of the study participants (77 .11 %) belonged to nuclear type family while22.89% participants belonged to joint family. Ever tobacco user study participants was 31.34 % while ever smokeless and ever smoke from tobacco users were respectively (30.52%) and (6.60%).Gender-wise distribution shows 41.69 %) male and 13.48% female were ever tobacco users. Much higher frequency found in male tobacco users in both forms smokeless and smoking. Ever tobacco user study participants was 31.34 % (Early adolescents 22.49% and late adolescents 40.68%) while ever smokeless and ever smoke form tobacco users were respectively (30.52%) and (6.60%). Conclusion: Smokeless form of tobacco consumption was much higher than
smoking. Daily users were ¾ of the total tobacco users. Handmade locally prepared tobacco product (Kharra) was the preferred mode in smokeless tobacco users while Bidi in smokers. Tobacco Smoking was present only in male. Trend o f mode of tobacco c o n s u m p t i o n is towards locally available products.