Objectives: Smoking prevalence in Greece is considered high within the European Union and the collection of evidence on tobacco use among adolescents is of vital importance in order to develop effective smoking prevention and cessation programmes.
Design: Cross-sectional.
Setting: Greece.
Primary and secondary outcome measures: Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS) is a national representative, paper-and-pencil, cross-sectional, school-based study of students at ages 13-15 years. The survey employed a multistage cluster sample design with schools selected proportional to enrolment size. Finally, 4618/5127 students aged 13-15 years participated in the survey. The school response rate was 98.1%, the student response rate was 90.1% and the overall response rate was 88.4%.
Results: The prevalence of current cigarette smoking was estimated at 10.1% (10.4% in GYTS 2005) and of exposure to secondhand smoking in public places at 67.4% (94.1% in GYTS 2005). The vast majority of the adolescents (82.1%) supported the banning of smoking inside enclosed public places. Most of the current smokers (90.8%) were not prevented/refused purchase because of their age according to existing law. Multivariate analysis showed that peer influence (OR=48.32; 95% CI 36.2 to 64.48), pocket money (OR=2.63; 95% CI 1.28 to 3.41), increasing age (OR=2.35; 95% CI 1.63 to 3.39) and low educational level of father (OR=2.82; 95% CI 1.7 to 4.68) were risk factors independently associated with current cigarette smoking.
Conclusions: Despite the existence of strict laws related to tobacco control, exposure to secondhand smoking among Greek students remained high even when compared with GYTS in 2005. This is likely a result of weak enforcement, what is really missing is the enforcement of the related legislation.
Keywords: epidemiology; preventive medicine; public health.
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