Roll-your-own tobacco use among Canadian youth: is it a bigger problem than we think?

Journal Article

Print(0)

BMC public health

BMC Public Health

27-Jul

557

2458-12-557

LR: 20150224; JID: 100968562; OID: NLM: PMC3434020; 2012/03/26 [received]; 2012/07/03 [accepted]; 2012/07/27 [aheadofprint]; epublish

England

1471-2458; 1471-2458

PMID: 22834563

eng

Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't; IM

10.1186/1471-2458-12-557 [doi]

Unknown(0)

22834563

BACKGROUND: Despite the apparent decline in the popularity of roll-your-own (RYO) cigarettes over the past few decades, RYO tobacco products are widely available and used by a substantial number of adult smokers. Considering research has yet to examine the prevalence of RYO tobacco use among youth populations, this manuscript examines the prevalence of RYO tobacco use and factors associated with RYO use in a nationally representative sample of youth smokers from Canada. METHODS: This study used data collected from 3,630 current smokers in grades 9 to 12 as part of the 2008-09 Canadian Youth Smoking Survey (YSS). Descriptive analyses of the sample demographic characteristics, smoking status, cigarettes per day, weekly spending money, and frequency of marijuana use were examined by RYO tobacco ever use and RYO tobacco current use. Two logistic regression models were used to examine factors associated with RYO tobacco ever use and RYO tobacco current use. RESULTS: We identified that 51.2% of current smokers were RYO ever users and 24.2% were RYO current users. The prevalence of RYO current users was highest in Atlantic Canada (40.1%) and lowest in Quebec (12.3%). RYO current users were more likely to be male (OR 1.27), to be daily smokers (OR 1.75), to use marijuana once a month or more (OR 2.74), and to smoke 11 or more cigarettes per day (OR 6.52). RYO current users were less likely to be in grade 11 (OR 0.65) or grade 12 (OR 0.40) and less likely to have between $20 to $100 (OR 0.44) or more than $100 (OR 0.45) of disposable income. CONCLUSIONS: Developing a better understanding of RYO tobacco use among youth is important for advancing population-level tobacco control prevention strategies and cessation programs. We identified that RYO tobacco use is not a negligible problem among Canadian youth. Ongoing research is needed to continue monitoring the prevalence of RYO use among youth and the factors associated with its use, but to also monitor if this more affordable tobacco product is being targeted to price sensitive youth smokers.

Leatherdale,S.T., Burkhalter,R.

School of Public Health and Health Systems, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada, N2L 3G1. sleather@uwaterloo.ca

20120727

PMC3434020

http://vp9py7xf3h.search.serialssolutions.com/?charset=utf-8&pmid=22834563

2012