According to the study by researchers at Brown University Medical School in Providence, R.I., teens who had at least three friends who were regular smokers were 24 times more likely to become regular smokers themselves.

"This study confirms what most parents already knew -- if you're around kids who are a bad influence, you pick their habits up. Smoking has always been an attempt to look cool and more sophisticated to your peers," said child psychologist Alan Hilfer from Maimonides Medical Center in New York City. Hilfer was not involved in the study.

The study's findings were based on surveys of 21,000 teens in grades seven through 12. The participants were interviewed at two different times during their teen years and classified as "never smokers," "experimental smokers," "intermittent smokers," and "regular smokers." Experimental smokers hadn't smoked a cigarette in the past 30 days, but didn't disapprove of smoking, while intermittent smokers had smoked between one and 29 days in the previous month. Regular smokers smoked on a daily basis.

The researchers found that the biggest risk factor for the progression from experimental to intermittent or regular smoking was having friends who smoked. Other key factors were alcohol use, parental smoking, depression, and feeling alienated from school.

The study's findings are published in the August 2002 issue of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.

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