Attitudes of Senegalese schoolgoing adolescents towards tobacco smoking.

Results show that tobacco smoking is a widespread phenomenon among Senegalese adolescents for several important reasons: economic (the intensive advertisement campaigns in favor of tobacco smoking), cultural (the ambivalence of traditional attitudes of Western urbanization, and the attractiveness of the Western way of life), psychological (the traumas of modernism on a basically poor developing country). Despite this alarming picture, signs point to an effective preventive strategy aimed mainly at schoolgoing adolescents and based on joint legal, scientific, cultural, and even religious action.