Abstract
Smoking is one of the leading worldwide causes of cardiovascular disease and cancer development, and it not only affects the consumer but also those who are exposed to secondhand smoke. The economic cost of caring for the sick affects resources needed for education and prevention of addiction to cigarettes. This topic has been extensively studied in industrialized countries, but the information from Latin America is less available and seldom is based on inferential statistics applied to clear hypotheses, both central aspects in this article. To test several hypotheses on consumption and characteristics of patients we did an email survey to the entire staff of a state university in Costa Rica (N=2 850) in 2012. A 20% responded in a period of ten weeks and we applied a multiple regression to their answers. The results are statistically consistent with the hypothesis that being single, occupying high job positions and being male lead to increased consumption of tobacco and to an earlier start. To our knowledge, this is the first study using this methodology for the staff of any university in Central America.KEY WORDSFactors associated with smoking, Latin culture and smoking, use of tobacco by university staff, legal drugs, addiction.
Highlights
RESUMEN El fumado es una de las primeras causas a nivel mundial de enfermedades cardiovasculares y desarrollo de cáncer; no solo afecta al consumidor, sino a los que se encuentran expuestos al humo de segunda mano
Smoking is one of the most difficult addictions to overcome, and since it is a legal drug that produces an income for the stated, its control is difficult (Lutz-Ramírez & Heibron, 2010)
In the Central American country of Costa Rica, the mean age for the earliest use of tobacco went from 16 years in 1994, to 10 years in 2002 (Bejarano, 2005)
Summary
We used the questionnaire Diagnóstico y nivel de dependencia del cigarrillo (Diagnosis and level of dependence on cigarettes) (IAFA, 2011) that consists of 13 items, divided into personal data, employment information, age of onset and active consumption of cigarettes. Our hypotheses were that being single, occupying high job positions and being male lead to increased consumption of tobacco and to an earlier start, as well as to a reduced interest in obtaining help to quit smoking
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