Cognizance and social attitudes regarding tobacco control laws in and around educational institutions of Nellore city, India

Indian national law namely Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act (COTPA) exists since 2003 and aims at protecting all the people in our country, but smoking is still prevalent among people. This study was aimed to assess awareness, attitudes, and practices regarding prohibition of sale of tobacco products near educational institutions of Nellore city, India.

A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted in degree colleges of Nellore city of Andhra Pradesh. The study population includes institutional personnel (student, teaching staff, nonteaching staff, and workers) of selected degree colleges of Nellore city. A structured questionnaire was designed for this study which was validated by Davis criteria; reliability was assessed by test–retest design. The questionnaire was divided into five parts consisting of demographic details (age and gender), smoking behavior, knowledge about tobacco control laws, attitudes toward the law and policies, and practices followed in the institution. Logistic regression analysis was used to find out the association between different independent variables to tobacco usage among institutional personnel.

Among the study population (n = 400 [100%]), 75.8% of the teaching staff do not know that there should be a board in the institution saying that “sale of tobacco product in an area within the radius of 100 m of educational institution is strictly prohibited,” 82.2% of the study population were not aware to whom should they report, 96.3% of the study population accepted that strict execution of COTPA law saves life, the participants who answered no to strict implementation of COTPA law, and to punish the person who is violating the COTPA law are susceptible to 0.28, and 0.14 times greater odds to be a smokeless tobacco user, respectively.

The study concluded that there was lack of knowledge about smoke-free legislation among the study population and a high support for strict implementation of COTPA.