Teenage Cigarettes Smoking and the Situation in Saudi Arabia in Terms of Prevalence, Predicting and Preventing Factors, A Narrative Review

Abstract

Teenage smoking is a growing health issue in the Saudi population, and it could be predicted by some factors. To understand teenage smoking risk factors in our population, we reviewed the literature on related topics. A narrative review of the related literature published in the English language from 2008 to 9th July 2019 using PubMed database was performed to know the prevalence of teenage smoking, important predictors and possible preventive measures.  The prevalence of adolescent smoking was ranging from 9.2 to 20%. The main predicting factors were male gender, parental smoking, and education status, smoking peers, having pocket money and watching smoking sceneries in movies. The important preventive strategies were improving awareness, excising tax and increasing legal age of smoking to 21 years.  Our study revealed that most of the Saudi youth aged from 15-24 years started smoking at an age younger than 18 years which call for the development and implementation of preventive programs to minimize smoking initiation among teenagers.