Prevalence of smoking among currently married Kuwaiti males and females.

A structured questionnaire was administered to a random sample of 608 Kuwaiti couples through a household face-to-face interview. Both spouses were non-smokers in more than half (50.8%) of all the couples, and there was a single couple (0.2%) with both spouses currently smoking. Only 0.5% of the wives reported current smoking. The prevalence of smoking was 3.2% among divorced/widowed women from the same households. The difference between the two groups of women remained significant upon controlling for the confounding effect of age. Among the husbands, frequencies of current and ex-smokers were 37% and 11%, respectively. Younger respondents consumed more tobacco and were initiated to smoking at an earlier age. Logistic regression showed that people with one to 11 years of formal education were more likely to be current smokers as compared to the rest of the respondents (adjusted relative risk: 2.07, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.46-2.93). Reasons for the observed findings have been discussed.