Opinion of adolescent school smokers about smoking cessation counseling and treatment in health services: a cross-sectional study, Goiás, Brazil, 2018.

Objective To know the opinion of adolescent school smokers about smoking cessation counseling and treatment, and to investigate whether negative opinion was associated with lack of motivation to stop smoking. Methods This was a cross-sectional study carried out in Goiás state, Brazil, with an intentional sample of adolescent students, in 2018. Poisson regression was used. Results One hundred and thirty adolescents took part. Most of them expressed a positive opinion on the three smoking cessation interventions surveyed: medical counseling (76.2%), dental counseling (70.0%), and smoking cessation treatment (66.2%). Negative opinions were more frequent among adolescents who were not motivated to stop smoking (p<0.05). Regression analyses revealed that lack of motivation to quit smoking was associated with a negative opinion about each intervention. Conclusion The adolescents had a positive opinion about counseling and treatment for smoking cessation in health services. Negative opinion was associated with lack of motivation to quit smoking.