The Influence of parental smoking behavior, attitude and knowledge on youth’s waterpipe smoking status in Lebanon.

Abstract

The global tobacco epidemic is expected to kill 8 million people annually by the year 2030 with 70percent of these deaths happening in developing countries. Current research and policy efforts focus on cigarettes, while many people in developing regions smoke tobacco using waterpipes. Waterpipe (WP) smoking is gaining great popularity and increasing alarmingly, specifically among youth in Lebanon. The objective of this study was to assess the influence of parents’ smoking behavior, knowledge concerning WP harms and their attitude towards WP on their adolescents’ WP smoking status and to evaluate which of the parents’ variables contribute most to smoking among adolescents.This study is a secondary data analysis of a random sample of 322 adolescents, aged 12-18, who were surveyed as part of a larger cross sectional national household survey on WP use among families with children, chosen proportionally from the six Lebanese governorates. Both parents-guardians within 1024 selected household and a random sample of adolescents were invited to participate and filled a structured questionnaire. Parental parameters were: their WP smoking behavior, attitude towards their adolescents’ WP smoking and their knowledge about the harms of WP. Bivariate and Multivariate analyses were used to assess the association between the parental parameters and the adolescents’ current and lifetime WP smoking status.After adjusting for potential covariates and stratifying the variables by parents’ current WP smoking behavior, parental attitude towards WP smoking, as perceived by adolescents, was significantly associated with their adolescents’ current (OR= 21.4; 95percent CI=2.2-210.2) and lifetime (OR= 5.6; 95percent CI= 1.5-20.8) WP smoking status. Parental knowledge about the harms of WP was also associated with the youths’ smoking status (For current: OR= 0.8; 95percent CI= 0.6-1.0 and for lifetime: OR= 0.8; 95percent CI= 0.7-0.9). The adjusted ORs of current and ever WP smoking among adolescents were higher when havi