Smoking and exposure to tobacco advertising among junior high school students in Qingdao city

Objective To explore the effects of tobacco advertising and sale promotion on smoking among junior high school students in Qingdao city and to provide evidences for tobacco control in schools.Methods Totally 6 155 junior high school students were selected with stratified multi-stage cluster sampling from 44 high schools in Qingdao municipality and self-administered with Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS) anonymously during September to November 2014.The collected data were weighted and analyzed using the complex survey module of SPSS 19 software.Results The current smoking rate was 1.5% and the rate of smoking attempt was 7.3%.Among the valid respondents,34% experienced exposure to tobacco advertisement or tobacco sale promotion during previous 30 days;of the exposed students,12.8% read tobacco advertisements or sale promotion massages on webpages,12.6% on outdoor billboard,11.9% via watching television programs,and 11.6% on newspapers or in magazines,respectively.In addition,50.7% of the respondents reported having seen scenes relevant to smoking on television/video/movie screens and 3.3% reported having kept the items relevant to brand logos of tobacco products.There was an association between exposure to tobacco advertising or promotion and tobacco use status.The current smoking students reported a higher tobacco advertising and promotion exposure rate than non-smoking students (72.1% vs.33.3%) and the students with smoking attempt also reported a higher exposure rate than those without smoking attempt (55.61% vs.32.1%).Conclusion Junior high school students in Qingdao municipality were heavily exposed to tobacco advertisement and promotion programs and the exposed students were more likely to have positive attitude towards tobacco use.