Prevalence and associated factors of smoking among secondary school students in Harare Zimbabwe

A 3-stage stratified random sampling was employed to select six participating schools and students. A descriptive analysis was conducted to describe the demographic characteristics of the participants. The prevalence of smoking was estimated and the comparison of prevalence was performed according to its associated factors. Logistic regression analysis was used to identify risk factors for smoking.650 students with a mean age 16 years and 47% of them female participated. Prevalence of ever-smoked was 28.8% (95% CI 25.3 to 32.3). Prevalence of ever-smoked among males (37.8%) was significantly (p < 0.001) much higher than among females (18.5%). In the multivariate analysis, smoking was found to be statistically associated with having friends that smoke (OR 2.8), getting involved in physical fights (OR 2.3), alcohol use (OR 5.7), marijuana use (OR 8.1) and having had sexual intercourse (OR 4.4).The study provides recent estimates of prevalence of smoking, and indicates that there is still a high prevalence of smoking among urban secondary school students. Exposure to friends who smoke, risky behaviour like substance abuse, premarital sex and physical fights are significantly associated with smoking. Interventions to stop or reduce the habit should be implemented now and future studies should monitor and evaluate the impact of the interventions.Adolescence is the time of life when people are more interested in taking risks and testing the boundaries of the world outside as well as their own limits. Throughout history countless adolescence has smoked tobacco [1]. This habit carries on into adult life and we find that of the 6.6 billion people on this planet, 1.3 billion are smokers and 1 billion of these are males [1]. By 2030, tobacco is expected to be the single biggest cause of death worldwide causing more deaths than HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, maternal mortality, automobile crashes, homicides and suicides combined[2]. Furthermore, it is expected that tobacco-related