Background: Adolescent tobacco use and the subsequent health problems are a major concern today. Tobacco con-sumption has been identified as the single most preventable cause of death and disease in India. Approximately 90% of the Oral Cancers in South East Asia Region are linked to to-bacco chewing and tobacco smoking.
In view of above, present study was carried out with an aim to find out the prevalence of tobacco chewing among ado-lescents in four villages namely Alia, bada, Vijarakhi and Theba, rural field practicing areas of Jamnagar district and influencing factors associated with it.
Methods: Present Study is a cross-sectional study, con-ducted amongst 930 adolescents of 10 – 19 years age group.
Results: The main observations of the study are, 33.12% of the adolescents were addicted with one or other type of to-bacco chewing, majority of addicted adolescents were in the age group of 17- 19 years (36.26%). Tobacco chewing is the most frequent form of using tobacco by adolescents than smoking. Majority of the adolescents were addicted for more than 12 months (57.47%). Main inducing factor for addiction was found to be friends (61.69%).
Keywords : Adolescents, tobacco chewing, smoking, per-centage