Adolescents Begin Smoking Cigarettes? It

¶ … Adolescents Begin Smoking Cigarettes?

It is widely know and accepted that tobacco use begins during early adolescence, but why adolescents begin smoking is not as well understood. This paper delves into the reasons and issues behind the decision by an adolescent (boys and girls) to light up that first cigarette.

According to Banerjee, et al., every day of the year an estimated 6,000 young people under the age of 18 try their first cigarette (Banerjee, et al., 2009, p. 12). Notwithstanding the well-publicized detrimental effects of cigarette / tobacco smoking -- and the well-established links to lung cancer and other cancers -- studies reported by Banerjee show that "51% of the U.S. population aged 11 to 18 years have tried smoking." Moreover, about 300,000 adolescent smokers who puff frequently every day "are in the age group of 11 to 14 years" (Banerjee, p. 12).

The Banerjee article, published in The Open Addiction Journal, surveyed 260 middle school students from two schools in the northeast United States, and the results will be reported here. First, before revealing the results of their own research the authors reference other studies. For example, Kandel and Jessor [19] posit that some adolescents start smoking due to "a more complex development sequence of activities" like joining a gang or dropping out of school; and Yanovitzky [20] put forward the notion that certain risk factors and sensation seeking leads youth to "deviant peers" and from there smoking and drug usage is part of the culture. One of the risk factors Yanovitzky mentions is "sensation seeking," which Banerjee and colleagues delve into more deeply in the article.

The students in the two middle schools completed questionnaires in class; 74% of the students surveyed were Latino; 13% were African-American; 7% were "bi/multi-racial"; 3% were Asian; and 2% were Caucasian "and others" (Banerjee, p. 15). The categories for the researcher's measurements used included: a) "Sensation seeking" (a personality trait that "regulates the tendency to seek untried, novel, and intense sensations and experiences"; there are "direct pathways" and "indirect pathways" to find the sensation the adolescent seeks); b) "Peer smoking" (this refers to the "frequency of friends" that smoke in the adolescent's peer group; there are direct and indirect pathways in this category too); and "Parental monitoring" (this refers to the "knowledge" and "involvement" that parents have as to their children's plans and activities) (Banerjee, pp. 13-14).

The first and most critical results of this survey show that "only peer smoking behavior and delinquent behaviors predicted adolescent smoking directly" (Banerjee, p. 17).

Additionally, the research showed that "sensation seeking contributes to having more friends who smoke" and it contributes to "delinquent behaviors, which further predict adolescent cigarette smoking," Banerjee explains on page 17. Indeed "high sensation seekers" choose to "socialize more with peers who are engaging in risky behaviors" (p. 17). Taking the sensation-seeking aspect a step further, Banerjee asserted based on the data acquired that "weak parental monitoring" is definitely associated with "having more friends who smoke and greater engagement in delinquent behaviors" (p. 17).

Meantime, a survey by Dr. Jennifer O'Loughlin, the results of which are published by Reuters Health, investigated the habits of 877 students. The survey began when the students were 13 years of age, and every 3 months for the next five years "researchers surveyed students' smoking habits and other factors potentially linked with starting to smoke" (Hendry, 2009, p. 1). During this five-year period 48% of the surveyed students (that is 421 of the 877) started smoking at some level. Of those 421 smokers, 87 (or 21%) began "daily smoking" habits (Hendry, p. 1). The "other factors" that came into play included: a) living with a single-parent family increased smoking risk; b) having "poor academic performance in school" increased smoking risk; c) using alcohol and other "tobacco products upped risk nearly 3-and-5-fold"; d) having siblings or friends that smoked raised the risk "about 2-and-3-fold" and having a parent or teacher or school staff member raised the risk of starting smoking "about half or more"; and e) "Feeling the need for a cigarette" raised smoking risk "6-fold" and adolescents that felt stressed, or showed impulsive behaviors, and showed "susceptibility to tobacco advertising" were considered more likely to take up the habit (Hendry, p. 1).

In another smoking study involving adolescents -- this one in three counties in north central Florida (Putnam, Gilchrist, and Union counties) -- adjusted the well-known "Smoking Consequences Questionnaire" format and created the "Adolescent Smoking Consequences Questionnaire" (ASCQ) (Lewis-Esquerre, et al., 2005, p. 83). The research was conducted with 437 middle and high school students; 60% were female; 75% were Caucasian; 64% were in 7th or 8th grade; a small percentage of the students (5.9%) were "White/Hispanic" and some were "Black/non-Hispanic" (9.8%). The remainder were Native Americans, Alaskan Natives, biracial, Asian or Pacific Islanders (Lewis-Esquerre, p. 82).

The researchers in this study went the extra mile to be certain that the content of the 38-item questionnaire was suitable for adolescents; so they brought on board a pediatric psychologist, a pediatric hematologist/oncologist, a high school teacher and a middle school teacher, Lewis-Esquerre reports (p. 83). The original 10-point Likert scale was shortened to a five-point scale, the author explains. When the ASCQ was completed, researchers found that 8.5% of the cases had missing data, and six items were "found to be highly skewed and truncated" and hence they were thrown out of the final tally.

The results -- some of which appear to the lay person to be quite obvious even without the empirical work that was done in this research -- shows that "compared with smokers, nonsmokers did not hold strong beliefs that smoking is pleasing to the senses, provides positive social consequences, or reduces boredom" (Lewis-Esquerre, p. 87). And nonsmokers "believed more strongly than did smokers that smoking provides negative social consequences," Lewis-Esquerre continued (p. 87). Those who answered that they had no intention to smoke in the future endorsed "greater belief" that smoking has negative health effects and "negative social consequences," the author pointed out.

For those adolescents who smoke, the "look, feel, and taste of a cigarette supersede all other reasons to smoke among current smokers"; but "even among nonsmoking teens" there was a belief that smoking would improve "mood"; and respondents with friends who smoke were "13.5 times more likely to be smokers themselves" (Lewis-Esquerre, p. 88).

Adolescent Girls and Smoking

A study in the journal Women Health (Hong, et al., 2011) surveyed 921 adolescent girls in Louisiana when they were in 9th grade and then again when they were in the 12th grade; individual factors and the social environment were programmed into the study. "Increases in smoking prevalence over time among adolescent girls were associated with their perceptions of themselves as overweight," Hong writes. The tendency of these girls was to minimize the risk that is associated with smoking and besides the weight issues, the girls' increase in smoking over the years between 9th and 12th grades was related to "…having friends who smoked, perceptions of friends' approval of smoking… and having monetary discretionary spending" (Hong, p. 1).