Determinants of Smoked Tobacco Consumption among Pakistani Adults: an Analysis from GATS Pakistan 2014

Objective: An in-depth analysis of GATS 2014 is performed to study the various demographic determinants of smoked tobacco consumption among Pakistani adults. Methods: The Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) is a standardized surveillance mechanism regarding monitoring of tobacco consumption globally, that uses three stage cluster random sampling technique to have a representative data. We performed the complex data set analysis using SPSS V 15. The associations were determined by carrying out univariate analysis, and determining chi squares for categorical variables. Results: Overall current smoking prevalence was found to be 12.4%. The univariate analysis revealed male gender (OR: 14.1 Cl= 11.2-17.7, p value 0.000), little or no education (OR: 1.4 CI=1.2-1.6, p-value 0.000), living in urban areas (OR: 0.7 Cl= 0.6-0.8, p-value 0.000) and avoiding smoking attempts in young age till 25 years (OR: 0.2 Cl= 0.1-0.2, p value 0.000) were determinants. Assosiation of demographic determinants with cessation behaviour showed that the health concern was the primary reason to ever stop smoking among both urban rural dwellers, educated and uneducated and respondents aged 25 years and above. Educational status, age of respondent and residence had almost no significant effect on cessation behaviour of smoked tobacco users. Conclusion: Males having low education and living in rural area puts an adult Pakistani at high risk of becoming the user of smoked tobacco. Health education involving primary health care providers particularly focusing on rural areas will reduce the prevalence of smoking.