Abstract

The research examines the influence of television cigarettes advertisement on the smoking habits of youth in Nigeria with a case study of University of Uyo undergraduates. It was established that television been an audio-visual platform has the capacity to influence the behaviour of people. Similarly, people tend to get motivated and persuaded by what they watch on television according to George Garbner. The research use quantitative design with survey research method, one hundred 150 copies of questionnaire were administered to respondents within Uniuyo campus out of which ninety100copies were retrieved. The data were analyzed and interpreted using the table, frequency and percentage method. Findings show that cigarette/tobacco advertisement influence the smoking habit among youth to some extent and despite the various campaigns on the effect of tobaccos yet many of youth shun the health implications of smoking. It was recommended that all agencies that are saddled with the responsibility to vet, censor and control advertising messages should see their role as crucial to human development and should not because of revenue to be gained from such advert use any advert that can put society into dangers.