A recent study showed an increase in the number of emirates addicted to smoking.
According to a new study, in the UAE there is an increase in the number of smokers compared to previous generations. So, almost every tenth woman-emirate smokes, but only a third admits this.
A study by the Healthy Future Study from the UAE found that only 3% of Emirate women and 36% of men admitted that they smoke cigarettes, hookah or medwa (a small smoking pipe).
However, a cotinine test, a substance produced by nicotine metabolism taken from a group of almost 400 participants, gave a positive result in 9% of women and 42% of men.
For the first time, smokers' statistics were compared with biochemical data for the region.
The results are especially worrying for researchers, since they say that the smoking rate among young emirates is likely to be higher than among their parents, which distinguishes the country from many developed countries, in which the number of young people who are addicted to addiction, on the contrary, is decreasing.
Earlier studies indicated that smoking rates among UAE citizens were 0.8% among women and 24% among men.
"It is interesting that both men and women have a mismatch between the data reported by the respondents themselves and the results obtained from the samples," said Andrea Leinberger-Jabari, assistant director of tobacco research in New York Abu Dhabi University, one of the authors of the study.
According to her, the society negatively perceives smokers, especially women - this explains why many smokers prefer to keep silent about their dependence.
The actual number of smokers may even exceed the numbers shown by the cotinine test, as sometimes it can give a negative result even if a person smokes periodically.
According to the co-author of the article, Dr. Ragib Ali, associate professor and director of the Public Health Research Center at New York University in Abu Dhabi, the average age of the study participants was about 30 years.
According to him, based on the results of the study, it is likely that the number of young smokers will exceed the number of people with this addiction among their grandparents.
