Original article Smoking habits of medical students in a private medical college of Bangladesh

Objective: To assess trends of smoking and the relation between smoking behavior of under graduate med-ical students and their attitudes towards smoking and treatment of tobacco dependence. Methodology: Data was collected from the medical students of Rajshahi Islami Bank Medical College, Bangladesh. A total of 200 male students completed the anonymous questionnaire. Response rate was 80.0%. Results: Of the respondents 20 % and 80 % were regular smokers and non-smokers respectively. Only 32.50 % of the regu-lar smokers smoke less than ten cigarettes, 30.0 % smoke ten to twenty cigarettes whereas, 37.50 % smoke more than 20 cigarettes per day. 25 % started smoking at nineteen years of age, 22.5 % started before this age and 27.5 % and 25.0 % started at twenty and twenty one years of ages respectively. 70 % started smoking just for pleasure. Only 29.72 % smoke light cigarettes whereas 33.78 % and 36.48 % smoke medium and heavy cigarettes respectively. Almost 75 % smokers agreed with the fact that smoking is harmful to health and 45% realized that their cigarette smoke bother others and again 70 % of smokers have attempted to quit smoking but failed and 42.5 % still wanted to quit smoking. About 55 % of smokers complained that they suffer from chronic cough, 60 % were lacking concentration in their studies and 45 % felt that they were short of mem-ory. Conclusions: Attitudes of smokers were significantly dif ferent on most items of tobacco, but knowl-edge of tobacco problem in the under graduate medical students was not sufficient. Teaching about tobacco and related issues remains essential in the under graduate medical course