Obscenity of Substance Use among Iranian Adolescents.

Dear Editor-in-Chief

Adolescence is a critical period in which many people engage in health threatening behaviors including smoking, alcohol and drugs (1, 2). Various factors affect adolescents’ tendency to substance abuse. Researchers have identified obscenity of substances (considered as an obscene act by the individual) as one of the psychological factors in adolescent and youth smoking (3, 4). This letter is part of a large study of adolescents’ smoking stages in northwestern Iran. The aim of this report is comparison of obscenity of substance abuse (cigarette smoking, hookah smoking, and alcohol drinking and drug abuse) by gender of adolescents.

In this school-based study using multistage cluster random sampling, 3222 students from 60 high schools in five districts of Tabriz, northwestern Iran were enrolled in 2017. Obscenity of substances was assessed using a questionnaire. Participants were asked to rate obscenity on cigarette smoking, hookah smoking, alcohol drinking, and drug abuse in a rating of 4 to 1(lowest).

This research was approved by the Ethics Committee of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences (ethical code: IR.TBZMED.REC.1396.188).

The mean age of the respondents was 16.02 ± 0.75 yr (range 15–18 yr). Table resents students’ opinion on the comparison of obscenity of each substance by gender. Obscenity of drug abuse and alcohol drinking were higher than obscenity of hookah smoking and cigarettes smoking in both genders. The highest obscenity (score 4) in both genders was drug abuse, with 96.0% for boys and 84.9% for girls. In boys, the obscenity of hookah smoking was ranked lower than cigarette smoking, but in girls, the obscenity of hook-ah smoking was ranked higher than cigarette smoking. As reported in the bottom section of Table 1, the sum and mean scores of the obscenity ranking clearly indicated the higher obscenity of drug abuse and alcohol use and lower obscenity of hookah and cigarette smoking.

Table 1:

Comparison of obscenity of each substance use by gender

	Male adolescents’ opinion(n=1841)								Female adolescents’ opinion(n=1381)
Score	Cigarette smoking		Hookah smoking		Alcohol use		Drug abuse		Cigarette smoking		Hookah smoking		Alcohol use		Drug abuse
	n	%	n	%	n	%	n	%	n	%	n	%	n	%	n	%
4	19	1.0	9	0.5	45	2.5	1768	96.0	38	2.8	20	1.4	151	10.9	1172	84.9
3	190	10.3	122	6.6	1479	80.3	50	2.7	220	15.9	140	10.1	864	62.6	157	11.4
2	1005	54.6	719	39.1	101	5.5	16	0.9	448	32.4	683	49.5	232	16.8	18	1.3
1	627	34.1	991	53.8	216	11.7	7	0.4	675	48.9	538	39.0	134	9.7	34	2.4
Sum score	3283		2831		5035		7261		2383		2404		3794		5229
Mean score	1.78		1.54		2.73		3.94		1.73		1.74		2.75		3.79

In conclusion, obscenity of hookah smoking was less than obscenity of cigarette smoking, especially among males. Further study is required to understand the effect of obscenity on substance abuse.