Educative intervention on the smoking habit in the adolescent. Cárdenas. Year 2007

Abstract

The smoking habit is among the psychosocial adaptation disturbances in the adolescent. Generally it begins in the early adolescence and advances an increase of future health troubles. We conducted a trial of educative intervention on tobacco use with ninth grade students of the urban high schools “José Smith Comas” and “José Marti” of Cardenas, in 2007, with the objectives of determining its prevalence, identifying the students' knowledge on the topic and contributing to the decrease of the smoking habit among the adolescent. The universe was formed by 348 students and the sample by 112, who stated they were smokers. With their previous informed consent, we applied an inquiry containing general data and knowledge on smoking. We developed an educative program, and the students' knowledge was evaluated before and after that. There was smoking habit prevalence of 32 % before the educative intervention, more frequent among male students, with less than 1 year after the beginning of the habit, associated to the house wine drinking in the “descarguitas” ( N.T.: a party organized by a group of friends with poor resources). Among the motivations for smoking we found that 66 % of the relatives were smokers. They referred frequent common colds after they began smoking. There was a significant increase of the students' knowledge on tobacco use and a 14.3 % decrease of its prevalence, constituting an impact of this investigation.