Introduction:

The abuse of psychoactive substances is nowadays a public health problem closely linked to the adolescence stage due to the fact that both personality and self-esteem are not yet fully defined.

Objectives:

The objectives of this study are to determine the prevalence of tobacco consumption in adolescents, identify levels of self-esteem, and the relationship of the level of self-esteem with tobacco consumption.

Methodology:

This was a cross-sectional-descriptive and correlational study applied on a population of 900 adolescents with non- probability convenience sampling for a final sample of 324 adolescents of both genders. The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and the prevalence of global, lapsic, current, and instantaneous tobacco consumption were used.

Results:

The average age of the participants was 13.3 years (SD = 0.99); 54% of the participants were females and 46% were males. The prevalence of tobacco consumption at some time in their life was 9.6%, while in the last month it was 1.9%. 62.3% of the adolescents were located in the high self-esteem range; with a higher percentage in male participants (70.5%), compared to female participants (55.4%). There was no significant relationship between levels of self-esteem and smoking (p> .05).

Conclusions:

The prevalence and frequency of tobacco consumption reported was very low. It was found that the highest percentage of participants in the study had high self-esteem.

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