Smoking among Macedonian workers five years after the anti-smoking campaign

Abstract

To assess the efficacy of nationwide anti-smoking campaign, we compared the findings of a study on worker smoking performed in 2005 with our latest cross-sectional study completed in 2010. It included 753 randomly selected workers, of whom 126 office, 108 construction, 93 agricultural, 97 petroleum refinery, 114 textile, 117 food processing workers, and 98 cleaners. Information was collected with a self-administered questionnaire. The prevalence of current smokers among all workers was 35.4 %, ranging from 30.2 % in office workers to 43.5 % in construction workers. It did not significantly differ from the prevalence recorded in 2005 (35.4 % vs. 36.8 %, respectively; P=0.441). Mean pack-years smoked among all smokers was 12.4 ± 2.3, ranging from 10.9 in administrative workers to 13.7 in agricultural workers. We did not find any significant difference in the prevalence of current smokers between male and female workers and between workers aged less or more than 40 years, as well as between workers of higher and lower education. The prevalence of ex-smokers was 10.5 %, ranging from 8.4 % in construction workers to 12.1 % in administrative workers, whereas the prevalence of passive smokers was 29.1 %, ranging from 26.2 % in food processing workers to 32.9 % in agricultural workers. Our findings indicate that the prevalence of current and passive smokers has remained high regardless of the anti-smoking campaign and call for stricter implementation of anti-smoking regulations.