AWARENESS OF HEALTH CONSEQUENCES OF SMOKING AMONG SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN MADONNA MODEL SECONDARY SCHOOL, WORKS LAYOUT, OWERRI, IMO STATE

Trends of smoking among the secondary school children have been increasing across the globe. In Nigeria, the number of tobacco smokers are increasing rapidly. According to Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS), about 3% secondary school children were tobacco smokers and 2% students were cigarette smokers in Nigeria. The purpose of this study is to assess the awareness on health effect of smoking among secondary school children in Madonna Model Secondary School, Owerri, Imo State. A descriptive correlational study was conducted among 98 secondary school children who were basically senior secondary students. Convenience sampling technique was used to select the study participants. Data was collected by self-administered structured questionnaire. Descriptive analysis such as – frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation was used to describe the sample characteristics. The Pearson product moment correlation co-efficient, two sample t-test and ANOVA test were used to describe the relationship among variables. The awareness level on health effects of smoking mean score was 3.17(.290) relatively high among the participants. The result also revealed that age (p=.036), gender (p=.033), class (p=.000), parents’ marital status (p=.047) and friend smokers (p=.023) were statistically significantly correlated with students’ level of awareness on health effects of smoking.Prevalence of smoking was significantly (p