Background:
31st of May is World No Tobacco Day, the UNITAB (Unit of Tobaccology) of Sapienza University of Rome organizes health promotion initiatives every year to inform students on the dangers of smoking and to help them to quit. This year, a survey was run among students to gather information on smoking habits.

Objectives:
Data were analyzed to determine a demographic profile of students who smoke in order to better define the young to target for future smoking cessation campaigns.
Quitting attempts were also investigated, to better understand the characteristics of those who tried to change their smoking habits, considering that these students of the sample might be more sensible to quitting interventions.

Methods:
A Google Form questionnaire was shared on Social Media during the week of the 31st of May, collecting 157 answers. We asked each participant for demographic data, course of study, age of smoking initiation and number of quitting attempts.

Results:

The smoking initiation age was divided into 3 groups: 14,4% of the sample reported to have started <15 yrs; 48,6% in their 15-17 yrs and 36,8% ≥18 yrs.
Concerning the relationship between course of study attended and smoking status, 70,3% of humanistic students reported to be smokers/former smokers versus only 45% of scientific students.
At least one serious quitting attempt was reported by 74% of the smokers sample, with a mean of 2,38 ± 1,31 tries.

Conclusions:
Thanks to the collected data, it was possible to define a smoker profile more sensitive to the smoking cessation topic. All this information is important to have a precise target in the quitting interview held by our UNITAB team, after getting in touch with the students who ask for our help to quit smoking.