Pattern of Water-pipe Smoking among the University Students: Gender Differences

Abstract

Water-pipe tobacco smoking is a way of tobacco consumption which smokes flavored or non-flavored tobacco using
a single or multi-stemmed device to pass the smoke through water or other fluid (WHO, 2015).Water-pipe smoking
is currently considered as a global phenomenon among the adult populationin addition to many health problems
such as obesity(Alghawrien et al., 2020; Maziak et al., 2015).
A systematic review (2018) aimed to review the medical literature on water pipe smoking and trends.
Around 129 studies with 355 estimates in 68 countries were included. The results showed that the prevalence of
water pipe smoking among adults was highest in the Eastern Mediterranean. Lebanese had the highest prevalence of
water pipe past 30-day use (37.2%), and Lebanese university students had the highest prevalence of ever use water
pipe smoking (65.3%). Iranian university had the highest prevalence of regular or occasional use of water pipe
smoking students (16.3%), and Egyptian youth had the highest prevalence of daily use (10.4%). The most studies
showed ranging from 0.3–1.0% increase in the past 30-day use of water pipe smoking over time in the US to 2.9%
per year among youth in Jordan. Likewise, ever use trends showed that Turkey had a significant decrease in use
from 2.3% in 2008 to 0.8% in 2010 and Iraq 6.3% in 2008 to 4.8% in 2012 (Jawad et al., 2018).