Background: Poorly informed college students tend to adopt the habit of cigarette smoking. This habit often continues into their adulthoods, adversely affecting the population's health and increasing the burden on healthcare systems.
Aim: We aimed at exploring the predictors of the avoidable habit of smoking. We performed an analysis of the correlation between the potential predictors (marijuana use among peers and truancy) and the tobacco smoking statuses of the students.
Material and method: Our study sample included 2976 students from colleges in Timis County, Romania, during the 2018-2019 period. The gender distribution of the participants was 62.5% girls and 37.5% boys, between the ages 18 and 25 years. A logistic regression test was performed to determine the impact of some personal and environmental factors, which are responsible for heavy smoking in this population.
Results: Our findings suggest that the degree of marijuana smoking among friends and the frequency of college truancy are meaningful predictors of heavy smoking among young adults. The students with higher cigarette smoking rates had significantly more marijuana-smoking friends when compared to the students with average smoking rates. The truancy was higher among the students with higher cigarette smoking rates, compared to the students with average smoking rates.
Keywords: associated factors; college students; heavy smoker status; marijuana use; smoking predictors; truancy.