Tobacco control policies in Taiwan: Knowledge, attitudes, and practices of senior high school personnel population

The objective of the study is to determine the smoking behavior, smoking attitude, and perceptions of tobacco hazards and campus tobacco prevention policy among senior high school personnel to serve as a reference for future tobacco prevention program on campus.

The target population of the study is the personnel from public and private senior high schools in Taiwan. 6203 participants from 61 schools complete the self-administered questionnaire with a response rate of 69.90%. The research instrument used is the Chinese version of GSPS designed by the WHO and CDC in the US.

The study shows the smoking prevalence among senior high school personnel in Taiwan is 10.53% where 21.02% for male and 1.53% for female. Of the current smokers, 63.27% smoked every day; 36.73% smoked occasionally; and 5.39% had smoked previously. Only 17.81% of the current smokers had succeeded in quitting smoking with the assistance of the school.81.21%of them had advised students to quit smoking. With regard to the tobacco related attitude among senior school personnel, 27.07% of them said that tobacco industry should be allowed to sponsor school or extra curricular activities;20.21% were of the opinion that tobacco industry did not deliberately encourage the youth to use tobacco. As many as 33.91% thought that tobacco products advertisement should not be completely banned; and 27.61% were opposed to the increase of the tobacco products price. 86.17% of the respondents indicate that there are school regulations that prevent students from smoking but only 55.37% express that the regulations are thoroughly enforced.