Factors Affecting Waterpipe Tobacco Smoking Trend in Students: A Scoping Review

Today, waterpipe tobacco smoking (WTS) has been proposed as a global health concern. Therefore, this research focused on reviewing factors affecting the students’ trends in WTS.

This research was scoping review. Data were collected from keywords in Magiran, ISC, SID, PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar databases from January 2004 to January 2022. Documents were screened and selected based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA).

In the initial search, 210 articles were found, of which 20 articles were included in the study by removing duplicates and unrelated ones to research objectives and inclusion criteria. The investigation results revealed that effective factors on the students’ trend toward WTS are classified into 3 groups, including background (gender, race, and background of smoking a cigarette), mental (characteristics elements, bitter experiences of childhood, and sensual attractions), and social (easy and cheap access, wrong attitude and knowledge, role of family and friends, religious and cultural elements, and health policies) factors.

Overall, among the effective factors for reducing WTS are making culture and increasing social awareness, preventing flavored smoking, cultivating and increasing awareness in society, and banning the production of flavored tobacco. The other influential factors were implementing laws prohibiting the use of WTS in public places, increasing the price of tobacco, and increasing recreational and sports facilities which are suggested to be investigated by responsible institutions.