Background & Objectives : Smoking is one of the major problems in the world today. It threatens people ’ s health. Pregnant women are no exception in this regard. Today, it is found that smoker women bear low birth weight babies, but the studies don ’ t offer clear findings about passive smoking in pregnancy and its effect on weight and height of newborns. This study is an attempt to determine the effects of passive smoking on the weight and height of the newborn babies.

  M ethods : This was a retrospective cohort study. We studied 100 pregnant mothers who were exposed to cigarette smoke and 100 others who were not. A checklist was completed in order to select those who could enter the study. A questionnaire was then filled out for both groups including the information related to the newborns ’ physical specifications.

  Results: This study showed that the average age of the mothers, their education, their husband ’ s education, number of pregnancies and the sex of babies born weren ’ t meaningfully different between the two groups. In the case group the mothers were exposed to cigarette smoke for 2.36 ± 2.28 hours on average and most of them (72%) were exposed to their husbands ’ cigarette smoke. The findings also indicated that difference in weight, height and head circumference among two groups ’ newborns were 11 grams, 0.15 cm and 0.02 cm respectively. The T-test indicated no significant difference between the two groups.

  Conclusion: The study showed that the newborns ’ of mothers exposed to the smoke had lower weigh, height and head circumference than the babies ’ of the control group subjects although the difference was not statistically significant.

 Background & Objectives: Authorities and scholars believe that determining cigarette smoking status of individuals and groups and finding reasons of smoking plays an important role in manipulating and facing with this dirty habit. The present study is an attempt to determine the rate of prevalence and the causes inducing smoking among students of Ardabil university of medical sciences.

 Methods:�This survey was a descriptive and cross-sectional study. Of 1300 medical sciences students, 1106 ones volunteered to participate in this study. The data were collected using a questionnaire and were analyzed in SPSS.

 Results: 154 students (13.9%) had experienced cigarette smoking previously and 82 students (7.2%) were already a smoker. Intimacy with smokers, self-gratification and acquiring enjoyment, educational failures, vague future career and smoking for entertainment were the most important factors inducing smoking.

 Conclusion: Cigarette smoking prevalence rate in this study was relatively low in comparison with similar studies. However, regarding the critical social status of these students, some serious measures should be taken to inform them about the dangers of smoking and at the some time some facilities should be provided for students, which can be of great help in this regard.

  Background & Objective: Limited information is available on adolescent’s substance abuse in Iran. The aim of this study is to estimate prevalence of substance abuse among the sample of sophomore male students in Tabriz city, and to evaluate the associated factors.

  Methods: Of all sophomore male students in Tabriz, 1785(13.7%) were randomly sampled, and a self-administered questionnaire with 48 questions was distributed to students in February and March 2005. The questions aimed to obtain information on substance abuse, smoking, self-confidence, tendency toward smoking and risk-taking behaviors as well as demographic information. The influence of different factors on substance abuse was evaluated with a logistic regression model.

  Results: The mean age of the subjects was 16.3±0.87 (min. 15, max. 19) years. Among 1785 students 226(12.7%) had the experience of taking alcohol and 36(2.0%) had used substances. The results indicate that, older age (OR= 1.55), having general risk taking behavior (OR= 1.70), higher smoking stage (OR= 3.70), having masochism (OR= 1.22), high socioeconomic class (OR= 1.62), and use of illicit substances (OR= 5.72) were factors associated with prevalence of the use of alcohol. Also higher smoking stage (OR= 3.26), high socioeconomic class (OR= 1.52), and the use of alcohol (OR= 7.81) were factors associated with prevalence of the use of substances.

  Conclusion: This study showed the low prevalence of substance abuse, and determined some of its risk factors among students. This study may be supportive of interventions that target multiple behaviors. The findings of this study is important for public health officials however, more studies are necessary to generalize the findings.