The questionnaire comprised core and optional questions.
The whole sample of 15,534 Cantonese-speaking respondents (aged 15+) of the 3 surveys included (1) current cigarette smokers, who smoked at least one cigarette in the past 7-day ( N = 5113) (2) ex-smokers, who had abstained and reported no cigarette smoking in the past 7 days ( N = 5141) and (3) never smokers ( N = 5280). One eligible person was selected among the eligible family members using the “next birthday” approach, whose birthday nearest to the survey date was selected at the time of interview. Residential telephone numbers were drawn randomly from residential telephone directories to become seed numbers, another set of numbers were generated using “plus/minus one/two” approach to capture unlisted numbers. This study was an analysis of 2015–17 telephone-based survey, which used two-stage random sampling method. The telephone-based survey was conducted by the Public Opinion Program (POP), the University of Hong Kong. The Tobacco Control Policy-related Survey (TCPS) was a cross-sectional regular survey commissioned by the Hong Kong Council on Smoking and Health (COSH). We also identified the association of PTU with socio-demographic characteristics, cigarette dependence, and intention to quit smoking.ĭetails of the survey method and the questionnaire used have been reported elsewhere. We investigated the overall prevalence and trends of PTU. Such grey area in regulations created a loophole for promotion and sale of alternative tobacco products for PTU. Many of these tobacco products are readily available for purchase on the Internet without age restriction. Facebook and Instagram) are not strictly regulated by the government. In Hong Kong, any sale promotions of tobacco products are prohibited, but marketing and purchasing via social media (e.g. Hong Kong is the most westernized city of China with remarkably low cigarette smoking prevalence compared with other Asian regions (10% in 2017), but the use of EC and waterpipe increased in the past few years.
Particularly in China, one of the biggest tobacco products selling markets in the world.įoreign and local tobacco companies rapidly expanded their business in China and targeted youth population. Little is known whether the associations are generalizable to other regions of the world. Several factors were identified associated with PTU, including younger age, being male, having no intention to quit cigarette, and high nicotine dependence. Most research on PTU was conducted in western countries (e.g. Over 80% of polytobacco product users reported starting PTU in young adult age (aged 18–35) and continued to use in lives. Youth were more likely to explore different tobacco products. Tobacco industries targeted young population (aged 18–24) and advertised alternative tobacco products as viable smoking cessation and harm reduction tool for quitting cigarette. PTU affected more than 70 low, middle and high-income countries. Asian regions accounted for 250 million of polytobacco product users globally. Asian countries reported high prevalence of PTU, especially in Korea. Concomitant use of EC and waterpipe also increased dramatically from 1.5 to 16% and 4.1 to 7.2% in 2011–2015, respectively. In the United States, the sale of cigarette decreased by 18% in 2000–2007, but cigar sales surged by 37%.
The worldwide cigarette consumption prevalence was declining in recent decades, but the use of alternative tobacco products was rising globally. Polytobacco product use (PTU) refers to concomitantly using two or more tobacco products, such as current manufactured cigarette (referred as cigarette), cigar, self-rolling cigarette, waterpipe and electronic cigarette (EC). The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.