A.G. Cárdenas’s scientific contributions

Introduction: smoking is a universally extended drug addiction. The onset is earlier in adolescence. Objective: to evaluate the characteristics of smoking in a group of school adolescents. Methods: a cross-sectional and descriptive research study was carried out in a group of school teenagers aged 13 to 15 years. Each 8th and 9th grader from "William Soler Ledea" junior high school in Centro Habana municipality, Havana province, was inquired from September 1st, 2011 to February 1st, 2012. The evaluated variables were age, sex, schooling, smoking habit, length of time of smoking, number of smoked cigarettes and living with smokers as influence or motivation for smoking. The relative risk or the incidence ratio was estimated whereas chi square test for comparison of three aspects was used, with 5 % level of significance (p< 0.05). Results: out of the participants, 16.8 % smoked. The 14-15 y age group, 9th graders and males significantly prevailed. Most of them did not smoke daily or for more than one month. The relative risk of smoking was high when the professor, the friends, the boyfriend or the girlfriend smoked too. The family was a very negative example of smoking in the vast majority of cases. Conclusions: high incidence of smoking was found in the adolescents participating in the study and the influence of smokers over their social and family environment was significant.