| Summary: | Background
There is a growing epidemic of tobacco use among adolescents in the developing world. However,
there is no up to date information on smoking among adolescents. Although in the developing world concerted
efforts are being made to control tobacco use, Zimbabwe does not have any documented tobacco control
programmes. We estimated the prevalence of smoking among school going secondary school students in Harare,
Zimbabwe.
Methods
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.
Results
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).
Conclusion
The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control includes provisions both on tobacco taxation policy
and on protection of public health policy from vested interests of tobacco industry. This paper provides arguments
why tobacco taxation policy should also be protected from vested interests of tobacco industry. TTCs taxation
strategy appears to be consistent: keep excise as low as possible. Apparent conflicts between TTCs concerning tax
structures often hide their real aim to change tax structures for competing interests without increasing total tax
incidence. Governments, that aim to reduce levels of tobacco use, should not allow tobacco companies to
influence the development and implementation of tobacco taxation policy.
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