How Social Care Beneficiaries in Poland Rate Relative Harmfulness of Various Tobacco and Nicotine-Containing Products

Marek Milcarz, Kinga Polańska, Leokadia Bak-Romaniszyn and Dorota Kaleta
Additional contact information
Marek Milcarz: Department of Hygiene and Epidemiology, Medical University of Lodz, 90-647 Lodz, Poland
Kinga Polańska: Department of Hygiene and Epidemiology, Medical University of Lodz, 90-647 Lodz, Poland
Leokadia Bak-Romaniszyn: Department of Nutrition in Digestive Tract Diseases, Medical University of Lodz, 93-338 Lodz, Poland
Dorota Kaleta: Department of Hygiene and Epidemiology, Medical University of Lodz, 90-647 Lodz, Poland

IJERPH, 2017, vol. 14, issue 9, 1-11

Abstract: The aim of the study was to examine how social care beneficiaries rate the relative harmfulness of tobacco/nicotine-containing products compared to traditional cigarettes. This information is crucial for the development of effective tobacco control strategies targeting disadvantaged populations. The cross-sectional study covered 1817 respondents who were taking advantage of social aid services offered by the local social care institutions in the Piotrkowski district, via face-to-face interviews. The linear regression analysis indicated that relative to women, men consider slim cigarettes, smokeless tobacco and e-cigarettes to be more harmful than traditional cigarettes ( p < 0.05). The smokers of traditional cigarettes reported menthol cigarettes to be less harmful than traditional cigarettes, relative to the non-smokers ( p = 0.05). The current results demonstrate that social care beneficiaries are not aware of the fact that some products are less harmful than others. Education concerning tobacco/nicotine products should include advice on how to reduce the adverse health effects of smoking (e.g., avoiding inhalation of combusted products), while driving the awareness that no nicotine-containing products are safe.

Keywords: disadvantaged groups; tobacco control; harm perception; harm reduction; public health education; cigarettes; electronic cigarettes; smokeless tobacco; water pipe (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/14/9/1029/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/14/9/1029/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:14:y:2017:i:9:p:1029-:d:111182

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().