Prevalence and Factors Predicting Tobacco Smoking and Alcohol Use among Thai High School Students

Purpose: This study aimed to examine the lifetime prevalence of alcohol and tobacco use in Thai high school students and determine the relationships between socio-demographic factors and substances use in Bangkok and Nakorn Pathom. Design: Descriptive study design. Method: 624 students from three high schools stratified by grade level were recruited. Data collection included socio-demographics and specific questions from the Alcohol, Smoking and Substance Involvement Screening Test (ASSIST) to examine lifetime use. Data analyses involved descriptive statistics followed by binary logistic regression analysis to create predictive models. Main findings: Almost ten percent of high school students reported ever smoking tobacco and 34.8% reported ever consuming alcohol. Regression modelling revealed that school type, sex, home structure, parent’s education level, and grade point average (GPA) accounted for 18 % of the variance in predicting alcohol use among the students. However, sex, school type, perceived sufficient income, home structure, and GPA accounted for 15.8% of the variance in predicting tobacco smoking. Conclusion and recommendations: Alcohol use in this group was relatively low, but the percentage of students smoking tobacco is significantly higher than other countries. These data suggest that increased focus on developing and testing specific tobacco smoking prevention policies, as well as readily available tobacco cessation strategies are imperative to decrease the alarmingly high rates of tobacco smoking reported by students. Further study with larger cohorts of high school students is needed to confirm the lifetime prevalence of tobacco smoking reported here and to gather longitudinal surveillance data on the prevalence of continued smoking into adulthood.