Factors related to smoking and its interruption

Abstract

Objective: Verify the smoking prevalence in a professional group and show which factors are related to smoking and its abandonment. Methods: A prospective study evaluated 494 randomly chosen public agents from the State Justice Department of Minas Gerais, in Belo Horizonte, in a total of 1229 people. They were asked to fulfill a query related to smoking, in order to evaluate smokers, nonsmokers and former smokers. The variables included were: age, gender, educational level, marital status, sport activities, religion and alcohol consumption. Smokers were also applied to the modified Fagerstrom test in order to establish their degree of dependency. Results: 58% of participants were female and 42% male. The age ranged between 16 to 69 years old with an average of 36.1 ± 10.5 years old. Of the total surveyed, 8.2% were regular smokers, 3.5% occasional smokers, 13.3% former smokers and 74.5% non-smokers. Among the smokers, 76.5% presented a slight dependency, 13.7% a moderate dependency and 9.8% a severe dependency. The practice of religion (p <0.001), regardless of belief (p = 0.642), and the practice of sports activities (p = 0,002) are protective factors in relation to cigarette addiction. Alcohol consumption (p <0,001) and elderly age (p = 0.002) are correlated with smoking. However, there was no association between smoking and gender (p = 0.38), educational level (p = 0.086) or marital status (p = 0.392). Among former smokers, the three main factors that led them to stop smoking were their own initiative (23.4%), fear of contracting a severe disease (13.8%) and cigarette smelling (13.3%). Conclusion: Youth, physical activity, religion and the non-consumption of alcohol are related with a decreased susceptibility to cigarette addiction.