Socioeconomic Correlates and Key Aspects of Tobacco Surveillance Using Global Adult Tobacco Survey Among College Students of Mangaluru, South India

Introduction Tobacco use in recent times has been identified to be the single biggest cause of morbidity and mortality. The epidemic of tobacco use has increased among young adults, which has changed the equation of the prevalence. The contribution of tobacco use to socioeconomic inequalities in health is increasing in India. Adolescent's tobacco use may play an important role in increasing social inequalities related to smoking and smokeless tobacco use. The objective of this research was to study the association between socioeconomic status and tobacco use among college students of Mangaluru, South India Methods To analyze the association between the socioeconomic status and tobacco use, the study was conducted among 18 to 24-year-old college students (n = 802) in different colleges of Mangaluru, South India. A subset of key questions from the Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) was used. The socioeconomic status of the participants was recorded using Kuppuswamy socioeconomic scale (for India) to categorize them into upper class and lower class. Descriptive statistics were applied to assess the factors related to tobacco use and socioeconomic status using SPSS ver. 24.0. Results Approximately 29.7% males and 70.3% of females completed the interview. Among 802 subjects, 69.9% belonged to the upper class and 30.04% belonged to the lower class. The current smokers who smoked daily 1.7% were from the upper class and 1.7% were from the lower class; no statistically significant difference was observed as well (p = 0.97). Approximately 3.4% from the upper class smoked less than daily and 3.1% from lower class smoked less than daily (NS). Among the upper class, 1.8% used daily and 2% subjects from the lower class used smokeless tobacco. A statistically significant difference was observed with subjects between the upper and lower class in noticing cigarette promotions in various forms during the last 30 days of interview. Conclusion Socioeconomic disparities on tobacco use need to be explored to ensure the initiation of new tobacco control activities and monitor the existing tobacco control policies. The current study finding demonstrates a significant but varied role of socioeconomic status on current and past tobacco use.