Smoking Addiction among Dental Students of Central India

The diminution of tobacco use among the Indians appears as the single greatest opportunity for preventing non-communicable diseases in the world today as the nation represents one-sixth of the global population. If the present consumption pattern continues, the annual death toll could rise to more than eight million by 2030 with 7 million of these deaths occurring in developing countries, mainly China and India. 1 The Portuguese introduced tobacco to India 400 years ago and established a tradition of the tobacco trade in their colony of Goa. 200 years later the British introduced commercially produced cigarettes to India and established tobacco production in the country. Today, 34.6% of the adult population use tobacco in any one form or the other as per the Global adult tobacco survey conducted in 2009-2010. Of which 14.0% of them use tobacco in the form of smoking. The survey also reported 24.3% of males and 2.9% of females are current smokers in India. 2 Health care professional plays a major role in tobacco control and cessation, both for the community as a whole or toward the individual patient. The students of the dental health care profession have their major duty to help smokers to quit and to prevent people indulging in smoking activity. Survey conducted by World Health Organization (WHO) in 2005 suggested that approximately 10 (9.6%) of 3 rd year dental students in India currently smoke cigarettes and 3.7% currently use other tobacco products. 3 The descriptive cross-sectional questionnaire-based study was conducted among 3 rd year and final year pre-graduate dental students in all six dental colleges of Bhopal city, central India. The study protocol was discussed, and ethical approval was taken from the Ethical Committee of the people's university. The written consent was also obtained from the respective authorities of all the colleges where study was conducted. Data was coded and entered into excel sheet that was later analyzed using SPSS for Windows result of the study showed that out of 847 students, 138 (16.3%) were current smokers, 79 (9.3%) use to smoke in the past and 630 (74.3%) had never smoked. Although, tobacco use among the health professionals was found out to be 25.1% in Jaipur 4 city of India. They also reported tobacco use was highest in the form of smoking. In the present study, around 33% of males and 1.5% of females were current smokers that was apparently similar with …