A Study on the Connected Items of Smoking Habit in Youth and Its Countermeasures

In order to find out the connected items of smoking habit and to consider its countermeasures of smoking, a questionnaire survey was carried out in July 1985 to 1451 1st- and 2nd-grade college or university students.

The percentages of students who were currently smoking and who smoked in the past were 75.9% of male students and 35.9% of females. 40.1 % of the male students and 42.6% of the female students first smoked when in high school and 31.1 % of the male students and 28.9% of the female students when in junior high school. 60.1 % of the male students and 63.2% of the female students took on the habit of regular smoking when in high school.

From an analysis according to Hayashi's quantification theory II, it was found that permissive consciousness and attitudes towards smoking, not to keep school rules and prohibition when in high school, lack of recognition of the hazardousness of smoking were items determining the smoking probability in the male students. And that indecision regarding the right to hate smoking, inability to choose a sports activity according to one's feelings were items determining the smoking probability in female students.

From these results, in order to prevent youth from smoking it is most important to take countermeasures through health education such as increasing knowledge and consciousness of the effects of smoking and promoting the mental and social well-being of junior high school and high school students.