Abstract
Teenage smoking is a growing health issue in the Saudi population, and it could be predicted by some factors. To understand teenage smoking risk factors in our population, we reviewed the literature on related topics. A narrative review of the related literature published in the English language from 2008 to 9th July 2019 using PubMed database was performed to know the prevalence of teenage smoking, important predictors and possible preventive measures. The prevalence of adolescent smoking was ranging from 9.2 to 20%. The main predicting factors were male gender, parental smoking, and education status, smoking peers, having pocket money and watching smoking sceneries in movies. The important preventive strategies were improving awareness, excising tax and increasing legal age of smoking to 21 years. Our study revealed that most of the Saudi youth aged from 15-24 years started smoking at an age younger than 18 years which call for the development and implementation of preventive programs to minimize smoking initiation among teenagers.
Highlights
According to World Health Organization WHO, 5.4 million annual deaths are caused by smoking, and more than 80% of tobacco-related deaths are expected to be in the low and middle-income countries by 2030 [1]
A cross-sectional survey conducted in an Asian nation (Malaysia) revealed that 9% of adolescents participated had ever tried smoking and more than half 62% of the current smokers had started smoking at or below the age of 11 years [6]
In the Kingdome of Saudi Arabia, 9% of ever smoker had started smoking before the age of 15 [12]
Summary
According to World Health Organization WHO, 5.4 million annual deaths are caused by smoking, and more than 80% of tobacco-related deaths are expected to be in the low and middle-income countries by 2030 [1]. Tobacco smoking including secondhand smoking considered one of the three leading risk factors for global disease burden [2]. A cross-sectional survey conducted in an Asian nation (Malaysia) revealed that 9% of adolescents participated had ever tried smoking and more than half 62% of the current smokers had started smoking at or below the age of 11 years [6]. The prevalence of cigarette smoking was 10.2% in adolescents aged from 14 to 20 years in Iran [7]. The percentage of Korean teenagers who ever For this narrative review, we consulted PubMed database in July 2019, the search terms included "factors," "influencing," "risk," "promoting," and "smoking," "tobacco," "cigarette smoking," and "teenager," "adolescent," "underage". References were excluded if they did not match our subtitles, and research on other smokeless tobacco or water pipe, shisha, hookah smoking were eliminated
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