Introduction: Tobacco use in children and adolescents is reaching pandemic levels. The World Health Organization predicts that India will have the fastest rate of rise in deaths attributable to tobacco in the productive years of adult life, as a consequence of an addiction acquired in youth. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional questionnaire study based on global youth tobacco survey was undertaken to study the prevalence of tobacco use among 15-20 years old senior secondary school students. A simple random sampling method was used to select the students from Government and Private schools in Patna city. Results: In the study population of 512 in the age group of 15-18 years, among the tobacco users majority is using smoke form of tobacco as compared to smokeless form of tobacco. Majority belonged to private institutions as compared to government institutions. Conclusion: Prevalence of smoking was much higher among the private institution students as opposed to students of government institutions; also, it was observed that the percentage of smokeless tobacco users were higher in this age group when compared to cigarette smokers.
