Health Promotion International, Vol. 19, No. 2, 189-196, June 2004
HEALTH PROMOTION INTERNATIONAL Vol. 19. No. 2 © Oxford University Press 2004. All rights reserved
A comparison of smoking behaviors among medical and other college students in China
1University of California, San Diego, CA, USA, 2Wenzhou Cancer Hospital, Wenzhou, China, 3Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China and 4University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, KS, USA
Address for correspondence: Shu-Hong Zhu, University of California at San Diego, Mail Code 0905, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0905, USA, E-mail: szhu{at}ucsd.edu
SUMMARY
A survey of students' smoking in China (n = 1896), comparing medical students with college students in non-medical majors, was carried out to determine whether a medical education has a preventive effect on smoking uptake. The survey, sampling students from 12 universities in three cities, found no significant differences between medical and non-medical students in smoking prevalence (40.7% versus 45.1% for males, 4.4% versus 6.0% for females), in ‘ever smoked’ groups, in ‘ever smoked 100 cigarettes’ groups or in years of smoking. For both student groups, smoking prevalence increased with age and with years of college. However, one significant difference was found among the smokers: medical students were more likely to be occasional smokers than were non-medical students (75.3% occasional smokers among medical students who smoked versus 60.6% among non-medical students). These results suggest that a medical education had little effect on these students' decisions to smoke, but that it may have modified their consumption level. Future studies are needed to ascertain factors affecting the decision to smoke and to identify possible early adopters of a non-smoking culture in China. Action on a societal level is urgently needed to change Chinese social norms regarding smoking.
Key words: Chinese smoking; medical students; occasional smokers
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