INTRODUCTION

People nowadays are aware about the consequences and also the disadvantages of smoking

towards themselves either in aspect of financial or even health risks. From the previous study,

in early 1950s medical research showed that smoking leads to lung cancer and other serious

and life threatening illnesses, including cancer of the upper respiratory and digestive tracts,

ischemic heart disease, stroke and peptic ulcer (Giskes et al., 2006; Turrell and Mathers.,

2001). According to National Center for Health Statistics, one of every three young people

who have smoking habits will die of smoking-related diseases. Some research also indicate

that about 4.9 million deaths were occurred each year in which this leads the cause of

preventable death in the world today (WHO,2004).

The increasing trends of smoking rates among universities students due to psychosocial and

attitudinal factors (Emmons et el., 1998; Kear., 2002; Patterson et al., 2004; Stockdale et al.,

2005) and tobacco use initiation which correlated with curiosity, loneliness and stress (Xiang

et al., 2004) and smoking risk among university students in other parts of the world (Hestick

et al., 2001; Prokhorov et al., 2003; Rigotti et al., 2009). For instance, it is normal for the

smokers to offer their cigarettes to one another as a signal of respect and hospitality (Pan,

2004). This will sparks the intention to smoke for the non-smoker in order to please their

friends, member, co-worker and society and to fit into a special group.

Those who live in deprived areas are 2.5 times more likely to smoke compared to those who

live in the least deprived. By that, it is very crucial to find and create ways or methods in

order to effectively reduce smoking among socioeconomically deprived groups (Ministry of

Health, 2009c). About 82.4 percent of college students who are smoking reported that they

have tried to quit but only 24.8 percent of them succeed (Everett et al., 1999). There are

several methods used previously to prevent college students from smoking. University have

conducted many programmes and campaign relating to danger of smoking or even they have

created university’s policy by taking action towards those who smokes in campus area.

Governments also play an important roles in order to reduce smokers by increased the price

of tobacco including the tax. Furthermore the Goods and Services Tax (GST) was applied to

all goods and services including tobacco products. The effective way of reducing smoking

prevalence and consumption are by increasing the tobacco tax (Chaloupka and Warner.,

2000; Chaloupka et al., 2011; Wilson and Thomson., 2005), also among low-income smokers

who are price sensitive (Farrelly et al., 2001; Siahpush et al., 2009; Townsend et al., 1994).

Smoking habits among students can be relates with their behaviour or attitudes since the

intention to quit from smoking comes from their own motivation in which how positively

they response towards negative impact of smoking. There are various ways that could be

useful for the efforts cessation of smoking among students such as public support and

monetary fines which are parts of the mix of compliance method. One would expect that

‘prevention is better than cure’ approach to solve the tobacco issues among the students with

higher level of education. However, there are no significant study that shows how effective

cessation of smoking at the campuses of educational institutions, thus, these remains the area

that will be explored in this research. On this research, theory of social cognitive has been

used where the extent of psychological and environmental factors and behaviour influences

the smoking cessation among college students.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of cessation of smoking among

students of UiTM Malaccca City Campus together with the overview of the students’

behaviour toward smoking cessation.