RESUMO
The survey of smoking as the most toxic, common and cheapest addiction, and its psychological and demographic variables among specially the youth who are efficient and constructive persons of the society is of high importance. For this reason, this study has been done to determine the prevalence of smoking and to compare self-esteem on smoking and nonsmoking students of Azad University of Gonabad. At this descriptive-analytic study, 279 students from Azad university of Gonabad were selected through stratified random sampling. They completed demographic questionnaire and Coopersmith self-esteem inventory. The data were analyzed using SPSS-11. The result showed that 9.8 percent of the students were smokers [14.4% males and 4.1% females], smoker students' parents [33.3% vs. 12.7%] and brother and sisters [14.8% vs. 4%] smoked more cigarettes than nonsmoker students' parents and brothers and sisters. greatest rate of daily smoking has been 1-5 cigarette in the entire sample and on male and female groups. Also, the findings showed that there were not any significant relationship between the mean of smoker and nonsmoker students' self-esteem [P=0.87].In accordance with the lack of relationship between smoking and self- esteem as a basic component in mental health, it seems that students' smoking is related to other factors such as modeling with their parents, brothers and sisters.