Smoking among urban Malaysian school children

A questionnaire on smoking habits was administered to 4106 Form IV school children in Kuala Lumpur. The period of survey was from 9 to 20 April 1984. 2099 boys and 2007 girls were studied and their mean age was 16.1 years. 32.8% of the students had been initiated to smoking and the mean age of initiation was 13.3 years. The prevalence of smoking was found to be 9.8% and the mean duration of smoking was 2.5 years. Most of the smokers and occasional smokers were boys. About 42% of the smokers wished to stop smoking and only 1% of the non-smokers intended to smoke in the future. The study recommended that health education programmes should be started earlier in school.