Smoking Rrevalence Among University Students In Sivas Region

[LANGUAGE= "English"] Purpose: This study is a pilot study for the project entitled “Smoking-free University” and is aimed to determine the present situation of smoking among college students.Material and Methods: A total of 899 students selected by stratified sampling technique answered the questionnaires. Data were analysed by descriptive statistics.Results: The questionnaire answered by 550 male and 349 female participitants was analysed. Seven hundred and ninety-nine (88.9 %) of them were aged between 19- 24 years. Three hundred and fifty (43.5 %) of them were current smokers, 27 (3.3 %) of them were former smokers; 429 (53.2 %) of them never smoked before. Smoking prevalence among male and female students were 50.1% (CI: 45.6 %-54.5 %) and 33.5 % (CI: 28.4 % - 38.6 %) respectively. The overall quit ratio was 7.2 %.Conclusion: Smoking prevalence among university students was very high and the quit ratio was very low. It requires an emergency intervention program to reduce the smoking prevalence and to increase the quit ratio.