NEW DELHI: A new survey aimed at finding the trend of smoking among the youths of Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR) found that 53 per cent of smokers belonged to the age group of 20 to 30 years who were highly stressed due to their work environment.
The survey 'Understanding Smoking Attitudes in Youth (USAT)’, conducted by Aviss Health Foundation, Gurugram, highlighted that youngsters are resorting to smoking to cope with stress which is mostly due to environment at their workplace.
Of all the respondents, who were between the age group of 15 to 50 years, a whopping 33 per cent admitted to have smoking addiction.
An online portal was created and the portal circulated by WhatsApp, email and other social media platforms for the survey conducted on the occasion of World No Tobacco Day to map the attitude of youngsters towards smoking in Delhi-NCR.
According to the survey, 56 per cent thought that smoking relieves them from stress while 55 per cent admitted that they are aware of its ill-effects and were anxious about their health, but continue to buy cigarettes.
At least 52 per cent of the respondents tried to kick the butt but failed due to their addiction to smoking.
“The fact that educated youths are succumbing to smoking just to escape stress, speaks volumes about the lack of focus in ongoing outreach programmes. We strongly believe that such insightful surveys can be instrumental in streamlining the existing awareness drives and devising the future policies,” said Dr Himanshu Garg, lead of the survey.