Rajasthan: Before smoking, kids start chewing tobacco, says Survey

JAIPUR: Children start chewing tobacco much earlier in comparison to smoking. The Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS), released in the state on Monday, shows that the median age of initiation of smokeless tobacco among 13 to15-year old children is 7.6 years and for cigarettes it is 13.4 years.
GYTS is a cross-sectional, nationally representative school-based survey of students in grades associated with 13-15 years of age used core questionnaire, sample design, and data collection protocol.
Besides, 9.3% of children are exposed to second-hand smoking in the state. It was conducted by ministry of health and family welfare which designated International Institute for Population Sciences as a nodal agency to conduct it under the guidance of technical advisory committee with necessary support from World Health Organisation.
In Rajasthan, the survey included 3,267 students of 34 schools, including 20 public and 14 private.
The survey shows that the 3.9% students smoke, while 3.7% children use smokeless tobacco.
The survey shows that 89% of current smokers want to quit smoking now. Over 95% of the children who wanted to quit smoking tobacco is to improve health while those who want to quit smokeless tobacco is not because they want to improve health but as their family does not like them consuming smokeless tobacco. The percentage of those who wanted to quit smokeless tobacco is much lesser than those who wanted to quit smoking. Just 2.4% of current users of smokeless tobacco wanted to quit now against 89% of children wanted to quit smoking now.
According to the survey, 23.9% of boys have heard about tobacco quitline and just 0.4% have called tobacco quitline. The children wanted to quit but they did not gather courage to call tobacco quitline.