Prevalence of smoking cigarette and the factors affecting the usage of these products among 15 years old and older people registered in 17th Family Health Center in Kayapinar district in Diyarbakir

Smoking addiction is among the most important research areas of public health science becasue of its preventable nature. This addiction primarily based on the matter of nicotine, contained in cigarette smoke. To prevent this addiction and to overcome its harms to public health, economy and the environment, one should be aware of the answers why smokers starts to smoke and what are the key factors for the people who accomplishes to quit smoking. This thesis studies the attitude towards cigarette, smoking frequency, the level of addiction for both smokers and ex-smokers and the key factors affecting smoking initiation and cessation based on collected survey-data. The cross-sectional data consists of 309 people over 15 years of age registered at 17th Family Health Center in Kayapınar district of Diyarbakır and it has been collected during December 2016 – January 2017. The survey results show that 30.4 percent of the participants do smoke, while 14.6 percent are ex-smokers and the remaining 55 percent has never smoked. Fagerström Nicotine Addiction Test results are 4.30 ± 2.5, 4.06 ± 2.94 for smokers and ex-smokers respectively (p=0.62). A high percentage, 47.5, of the ones who smoked or smoking have been started to smoke before their 18. Results also indicates that there is a statistically significant difference in starting age of smoking between men and women (p=0.00). Moreover, and fortunately, 52.1 percent of smokers has stated that they are planning to quit smoking. Since there is expanding awareness about the dangers of cigarette among the public and most of the smokers do want to quit smoking, the researches should identify the factors affecting smoking initiation and cessation and consequently precautionary measures should be taken to protect the public from cigarette addiction.