Smoking Status in Working Adolescents

Background: Smoking is one of the most important social problems of our time. Adolescents especially who start working at early ages are in the risk group in terms of smoking. For this reason, working groups in adolescents should be evaluated and assessed specially. Objectives: In this study’s aimis to determine the status of smoking in working adolescents. Methods: The research is descriptive and covers the fall semester of the academic year of 2015-2016, and the survey was conducted between 22-26 March 2016. There are 705 students (120 girls, 585 males) registered at the school where study done. In this study, 299 (32 female, 267 male) students who were willing to participate in the survey were selected. The survey was conducted under the observation in the class and lasted approximately 20 minutes. The obtained data were evaluated with SPSS 21 (PASW Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) packet program. Results: More than half of the students smoked and 67.5% of the students tried smoking cigarettes. The majority of smokers started smoking between 12-15 ages and indicated the influence of friends as a starting smoking. Conclusion: The majority of the students reported that they smoked and that they started at an early age. Adolescents need to be evaluated in more comprehensive research of substance use