RESUMO
OBJECTIVE: To describe the prevalence of tobacco use among teenagers in different populations by sex and grades at school, and to provide evidence for the development of smoking control and health promotion programs. METHODS: A total of 4 797 teenagers selected from 36 schools through stratified multi-stage cluster sampling in Zhejiang province and were surveyed by using a questionnaire with 3 886 eligible ones for analysis. Indicators as tried smoking, current smoking, and secondhand smoke exposure, etc., were calculated by weight on age proportions from the numbers of juniors in Zhejiang province. RESULTS: Prevalence rates of tried smoking and current smoking among teenagers were 10.91% and 2.07%, respectively. 7.72% of the juniors were susceptible to future tobacco use. The prevalence rates of tried smoking were 15.65% for boys and 5.58% for girls, 12.13% in rural and 9.24% in urban areas. Students from the 9(th) grade showed the highest rate (15.15%) while the 7(th) graders appeared the lowest level of susceptibility to future tobacco use (5.22%). The highest level of current smoking was seen in the group of " weekly allowance more than 30 Yuan, from parents"(4.07%). The prevalence of secondhand exposure to smoke in outdoor and indoor places, public transport, or at home were 57.60%, 54.45%, 46.97%, and 43.16%, respectively, among the teenagers. 3 071 juniors (77.33%) saw the smoking scenes in the past 30 days but only 1 367 juniors (28.30%) were aware of the basic knowledge on tobaccos in class, in the past 12 months. CONCLUSIONS: There were juniors who tried to smoke or were current smokers. The rate of secondhand exposure to smoking was high. A large number of the juniors were lack of education on knowledge related to tobacco control, in the classroom. It was important to promote and publicize the knowledge on tobacco so as to reduce the number of teenagers who were susceptible to future tobacco use.