| dc.description.abstract | Tobacco and alcohol use, and substance abuse are common problems among manual
labourers in many areas of the world. Increased consumption of alcohol, tobacco, and
other substances in Sri Lanka has severely impacted the country’s economy. Descriptive
cross- sectional study was conducted using simple random sampling among 411 male
manual labourers in ve randomly selected peri-urban MOH divisions in the Colombo
district, Sri Lanka. Out of 411 participants, a signi cant proportion (n=215) smoked and
drank alcohol (n=215). Majority had good knowledge and awareness of health problems
(94%), socioeconomic issues (95%), and the adverse e ects of drug use (86%). There were
303 smokers, 322 alcohol users, and 71 other substance abusers. Most used tobacco
types were cigarettes (86.8%), alcohol types were beer and local arrack (44.7%), and other
substances types were ice and heroin (28.2%). Currently, a higher percentage of participants,
82.8% smoked cigarettes more than once per day, 51.9% consumed alcohol weekly
and 63.4% used other substances once a day. Majority of participants were in uenced by
friends to start smoking (35.5%), consume alcohol (41%) and use other substances (78.9%)
and had received advice to quit smoking (n=122), alcohol (n=134) and other substances
(n=16) from their family members. There were signi cant associations between monthly
income (p = 0.036) and level of education (p = 0.000) with knowledge and awareness of
health problems. This study has shown that the prevalence of alcohol and tobacco use
is higher among male manual labourers, and current alcohol consumption among the
labourers has decreased signi cantly due to price increases. It is important to maintain
higher alcohol and tobacco pricing, implement rehabilitation and assessment programmes
to prevent the rise in prevalence among manual labourers. | en_US |
