Smoking and alcohol consumption among university students of the healthcare area

Aim To investigate the prevalence of alcohol and tobacco consumption as well as behavioral and socio-demographic aspects among undergraduate students in the healthcare area of a Brazilian private university. Subjects and methods A cross-sectional study was conducted with undergraduate students in health sciences courses, with randomized probabilistic sampling proportional to the number of students in each course. Two trained researchers, by means of a socio-demographic and behavioral questionnaire, carried out the data collection. One questionnaire related to the smoking habit and the other the Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test. The data were entered and organized in SPSS software, version 20.0 for Windows (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences), presented through descriptive (absolute and percentage distribution) and analytic statistics. Results The total sample was composed of 317 students (29.7% male and 70.3% female). The prevalence rate of nicotine consumption was 3.2% and hazardous alcohol consumption 31.9% among university students. It was verified that the habit of smoking was more prevalent among male students (p = 0.007). The hazardous use of alcohol was proportionally greater among male undergraduates (p < 0.001) in the physical education course (p = 0.003) who were smokers (p < 0.001). Conclusion The prevalence of smoking was low, with the majority of smokers being male, while the hazardous use of alcohol among university students was high, also predominantly among males.