الفهرس 
Young people and tobacco products useOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Smoking habit is rapidly growing in Egypt like an epidemic. Despite the governmental efforts to control this maleficent habit, the tobacco companies appeal the young adults with different types of electronic gadgets which called the electronic cigarettes. Fortunately, tobacco consumption including e-cigarettes is preventable, and its complications can be avoidable by focusing all the efforts to kick out the smoking habit from our community.
The aim of this work was to measure the prevalence of e-cigarette use among a sample of undergraduate students from selected universities in Cairo, to identify the determinants of e-cigarette use among university students and to measure the perceptions of the university students to the e-cigarette vaping.
A structured self-administered Arabic language questionnaire was created to collect data from 2672 university students. The questionnaire includes Section I: Sociodemographic and life style characteristics of the studied university students, Section II: The traditional tobacco products’ use among participants, Section III: E-cigarette awareness, use, other information, reasons of use and students’ perception towards e-cigarettes, and Section IV: E-cigarette vapers correlates.
The present study finding revealed that the prevalence of (e-cigarette vapers) was 17.6%, and the total (ever e-cigarette users) prevalence was 32.2% among the university students.
Regarding the determinants of e-cigarette vaping among the university students’ vapers, smoking status with gender, age, nationality, type of university and education in addition to the academic achievement, working status, monthly pocket money and the mother’s educational level were significantly related to e-cigarettes vaping.
Regarding the smoking status, more than half (53.4%) of e-cigarettes vapers were smokers who started smoking at younger age than the smokers of non-vapers group.
Regarding the gender, most of the e-cigarette vapers were males (81.3%).
Regarding the age, it was found that the e-cigarette vapers students were older than non-vapers students.
Regarding the nationality, the e-cigarette vaping was more frequent between Non-Egyptian in comparison to the Egyptian university students.
Regarding the type of the university, the private university students more frequently vaping e-cigarette (58.3%) than the students used to attend the governmental university. In addition, higher percentage of e-cigarette vapers was found among the theoretical faculties’ students (58.8%).
Regarding the academic achievement, more than half of the e-cigarette vapers students (58.2%) used to have (good or less) academic performance.
Regarding the working status, e-cigarette vaping was more common among students who worked beside studying.
Regarding the monthly pocket money, e-cigarette vapers students were those with monthly pocket money which exceeds 1000 Egyptian pounds.
Regarding the mother’s educational level, most of the e-cigarette vapers (82%) were raised up by university graduated mothers.
Respecting the university students’ perceptions toward the e-cigarette vaping, it was found that the students had negative attitudes toward certain aspects of the e-cigarette vaping. The university students believed that vaping e-cigarettes is harmful as smoking the other traditional tobacco products, and the e-cigarette vapor can harm the vapers and the surroundings. Moreover, the students believed that e-cigarette vaping is unsafe to pregnant females, and to patient with cancer. The students also thought that e-cigarette devices could be used to vape illegal drugs, and these devices might act like a gate-way to smoke other tobacco products in the future.
Despite the negative attitudes of the students toward the e-cigarette vaping, about (9.3%) of the university students who never tried e-cigarette would like to vape in the future.
Surprisingly, the governmental policies that restricted the e-cigarettes’ marketing, were not considered as obstacles to obtain the e-cigarette gadgets. Most of the vapers (93.2%) found an easy access to get the e-cigarette devices and accessories mainly from the tobacco stores or the e-cigarette kiosks in malls.
Regarding the awareness of the university students about the e-cigarette existence, nearly all the university students (94.7%) know the e-cigarettes either from their friends or the internet. This percentage reflected the widespread of the e-cigarette among the university students in the Egyptian community.
Regarding the commonest type of the used e-cigarettes’ liquid, fruity flavored with different nicotine concentrations is the commonest e-cigarette’s liquid to be used by the vapers in the current study.
Regarding the self-health evaluation after vaping the e-cigarettes, about two third of the vapers (65.1%) found no change in their health status after vaping the e-cigarettes.
Regarding the reasons behind vaping e-cigarette, the present study revealed that the curiosity of trying a new device, and the attracting flavors followed by trying to quit the traditional tobacco products were the top reasons behind vaping the e-cigarettes among the university students.
Recommendations include, raising the awareness of all community individuals about the pros and cons of e-cigarettes vaping, and implementing restricted governmental policies to control the widespread of the e-cigarettes phenomenon.