| Summary: | Background
The harmful effects of smoking are well documented. Moreover, public
knowledge and beliefs about the health risks of smoking and secondhand smoke
exposure have increased substantially over the past several decades.
Methods
The aim of this study is to examine the association between the
awareness of the health risks of smoking and secondhand smoke exposure with the
desire to quit smoking. The Wave 1 (2016) ITC 6 European Country (6E) Survey within
the framework of EUREST-PLUS Project covered both urban and rural areas of the
country's 13 geographical regions. The survey sample consisted of 1,000
individuals smokers aged 18 and older in Greece, one of the six ITC 6E countries.
Results
The majority of Greek smokers agreed that
smoking causes lung cancer (95.4%), heart diseases (94.4%), throat cancer
(87.9%), bronchitis (87.7%) and mouth cancer (84.8%), however, 51.7% smokers
disagreed that smoking could cause blindness, tuberculosis (37.8%), impotence
(33.8%), stroke (24%) and heart attacks to non-smokers (27.3%). Chi-square and
spearman correlation coefficient were fitted to investigate the association
between the awareness of the effects of smoking and the desire to quit. The
percentages of the awareness regarding blindness and stroke were less among
smokers who reported moderate difficulty to completely quit (p<0.05).
Moreover, smokers reported slight difficulty to successfully quit, reported
less awareness that smoking could cause bronchitis and tuberculosis
(p<0.01). The levels of the awareness approximately to all health risks were
higher among smokers reported that they want to quit “a lot” (p<0.01).
Conclusions
Our findings highlighted the lack of knowledge regarding the harmful
effects of smoking, mostly among those less motivated to quit. Hence, more
effort will be needed by health policy-makers and public campaigns in order to
inform smokers about the smoking risks and promote tobacco treatment delivery.
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