Abstract

Background: Smoking cigarette and water pipes (also known as shisha, hubbly bubbly, narghiles, hookahs, and goza) is quite common among youth not only nationally but also internationally.

Objective: To understand the prevalence of smoking cigarette and water pipes among medical students in Taif University, Taif city, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Materials and Methods: Medical students at Faculty of Medicine, Taif University, Taif, were asked to complete a questionnaire in order to explore the prevalence of smoking cigarette and water pipes.

Result: The prevalence of smoking cigarette and water pipes among medical students in Taif University in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was 27% smoking cigarette (5% smoking sometimes) while 42% smoking water pipes (30% smoking sometimes).

Conclusion: Smoking water pipes was much higher when compared with smoking cigarette owing to a sense among users that water pipe tobacco smoking is less risky to one’s health and less dependence-producing than cigarettes. In addition to that, the majority of the students started smoking since they enrolled at the university, and they thought mistakenly that this kind of behavior could help them to reduce their stress, particularly when they start course of medicine and surgery.

Key words: Smoking, cigarette, water pipes, medical students, Saudi Arabia