title: Behaviours and opinions of adolescent students on smoking.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Smoking is one of the major causes of preventable diseases, disability and death in the globe and Turkey. In our study, the knowledge of students about smoking addiction and which organ in the body is damaged due to smoking are aimed to be determined.
  
  
  METHODS
  Surveys were applied to students of private university preparatory training center on the Anatolian side of Istanbul. In the conducted survey, the questions related with students' demographic characteristics, themselves, their families and friends smoking addiction, the reasons to start smoking, whether they want to quit smoking, whether they try to quit smoking and which of the organs that they know smoking is harmful were asked. The data obtained were transferred to the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) for Windows.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Out of 358 students who answered the survey completely, 152 students (42.4%) were male, 206 (57.6%) were female. Students were between the ages of 16-20 and the mean age was 18 ± 1.15. When asked about their smoking addiction, 84 (23.5%) of total actively continued to smoke. Total of 14 students (3.9%) smoked and then stopped smoking, 260 students (72.6%) have never smoked. Curiosity was the most commonly reported reason to start smoking (39%) and for the second row, they indicated to start smoking due to tobacco user friends (30.6%).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  More and more young people begin smoking at an earlier age and they transfer the problems of this bad addiction to the later years of their lives. There should be fight resolutely against actions and conditions encouraging smoking both as a state and society and in order to rescue young people from this bad addiction, it should continue to take steps which facilitate accessibility to supportive institutions.
authors.affiliation: Clinic of Chest Diseases, Sureyyapasa Chest Diseases and Chest Surgery Training and Research Hospital, Istanbul, Turkey. icmeli@superonline.com.
authors.forename: Özlem Saniye
authors.initials: ÖS
authors.lastname: İçmeli
authors.forename: Hatice
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Türker
authors.forename: Baran
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Gündoğuş
authors.forename: Merve
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Çiftci
authors.forename: Ülkü
authors.initials: Ü
authors.lastname: Aka Aktürk
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012907:Smoking / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology*; D016540:Smoking Cessation / Q000523:psychology*; D000074606:Smoking Prevention; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology*; D014028:Tobacco Smoke Pollution / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D014029:Tobacco Use Disorder / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology*; D014421:Turkey; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D014028:Tobacco Smoke Pollution