Smoking and its harmful impact among students

The prevalence of smoking especially among the students of the private universities in Bangladesh is alarming. On a recent survey of students of two top ranking private universities, it was found that there is a high prevalence of smoking among students. However there is also a great movement among these students towards quitting smoking.

According to a survey conducted in both the universities, the highest number of smokers are aged between 18 to 22 and the next age group falls in the range between 22 to 26. The average number of smokers is above 26 and onwards and they are all students of both the universities.

Now this may sound as if no one wants to quit as they are just addicted, a general perception about youth addiction in our society. However the reasons are quite the opposite of what is perceived in general by the adults in our society.

The reasons arise from the extremely delicate emotional state and vulnerability of the youth. Boys who were 90% of the respondents are extremely gullible and react strongly to emotional incidents.

Most of the respondents said that they were very concerned about quitting smoking. The question is why they don't. A fairly large percentage said they tried quitting but were already addicted or are compelled by the mad rush for CGPAs as well as the availability of street vendors rushing to the students as they exit their campuses with cigarettes.

First hand smoking by now must have been established as the main culprit, however second hand smoking especially in university washrooms despite authorities imposing bans and warnings in their campuses is a far worse culprit.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), second-hand smoke contains carcinogens, toxic metals and poisonous gases. While all of these substances obviously have adverse effects on human health, they also affect our environment as well. Second-hand smoke goes into our atmosphere and degrades air quality. The CDC also reports that a collection of experiments demonstrated that levels of respirable suspended particulates (RSPs) decreased by up to 96% in public spaces that banned smoking.

The smoking among the young population as a whole is alarming. This should be addressed properly to create awareness among them and proper measures should be taken to prevent smoking among young population.

A concentrated effort is needed by the universities, schools and colleges as well as our local authorities to increase counselling to address student problems.

E-mail: rainaaz@hotmail.com