Smoking exposure among school children in Brazil

The article describes the prevalence of tobacco exposure among adolescents at the National Adolescent School-based Health Survey (PeNSE) and investigates socio-demographic and behavioral factors associated with smoking. The profile of a current smoker was defined as reporting having smoked at least one cigarette in the previous 30 days. The socio-demographic characteristics studied were age, sex, race/skin color, mother education, household assets index and school (public or private). Risk and protective behaviors included were alcohol and drug experimentation, sexual intercourse, consumption of at least one glass of alcohol in the past 30 days and perform or be willing to perform physical activity on most days of the weeks. Prevalence of current smoker was 6.3% (95%CI:5,87-6,74) and was positively associated with older age, lower education of the mother, brown skin color, study in public school and presence of all the risk and protective behaviors studied. On the multivariate analysis, smoking remained associated with age and risk behaviors. To perform or be willing to perform physical activity were inversely related to smoking. The coexistence of risk behaviors is also present in adolescence, suggesting that health promotion policies to the adolescence might have a broader impact, including on tobacco use.