The Study of Vape Smoking among Al-Iraqia Colleges of Medicine and Dentistry Students

Abstract E-cigarettes have become widely available across the world, especially among adolescents. Nicotine is highly addictive—and vaping at a young age rewires the brain an makes it harder to avoid other tobacco products like cigarettes, so explaining the health risks of nicotine may be enough encouragement to halt the smoker from like gaining new healthier habits that replaced smoking, such as exercise can be very helpful. A cross-sectional study was conducted using a self-administered questionnaire to identify the predictors of vaping smoking among university students aged >17 years in two Universities in Baghdad, Iraq. 98 university students enrolled in this study aged between (17 and 26) years old with mean age of (20 ± 1.6 SD). 68.36% of the participants were males, and 31.64% were females. Most of the studied sample were medical students 76.53% with some participation from dentist students 23.47%. Among the males, 31.3% of them were vape smokers, while the females shown 0% prevalence of vape smoking, Regarding vape consumption The majority of the students were non- smokers 78.6%, while vape smokers represented 21.4% of the sample. 61.9% of vape smoker have the intention to stop smoking, where 38 % of those have tried to stop vape smoking during the last year .and as response to the question (Do you think you would be able to stop smoking vape if you wanted to) 80% of vape smokers have answered as (No) which reflect the addiction among these groups. In this study, we had found that most of the students where non vape smoker (78.6%), while vape smokers made only (21.4%) of the sample with the majority of them were smoking both vapes and other tobacco products. with 100% of the smokers being male, where males had significantly higher knowledge rates about vape products and its effect compared to females. We also identify some factors that may affect the prevalence and use of vape smoking: having friends or family members that also smoke, socioeconomic state of the students also effects the consumption of vape products and its use. Key words: Vape, Smoking, Medical Students