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Parents, Friends Influence Teen Smoking
September 4, 2009

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Research Summary

Occasional teen smokers whose parents smoke and provide minimal supervision have a 71-percent chance of becoming daily smokers, while children of nonsmokers who are closely supervised face just a 31-percent chance of becoming addicted to cigarettes, according to a new study.

Reuters reported Aug. 26 that researchers who tracked 270 teens who smoked occasionally before high school found that 58 percent of the study subjects became daily smokers by their senior year. The smoking habits of parents and friends had a strong influence on whether the teens kept smoking or not, the authors said.

Lead researcher Min Jung Kim of the University of Washington said that parents can break their teens' progression from occasional to addicted smoker by quitting themselves and engaging in "effective supervision and appropriate punishment or rewards for children's behavior."

The study was published in the September 2009 issue of the journal Pediatrics.

This article summarizes an external report or press release on research published in a scientific journal. When available, links to the sources are provided above.

COMMENTS ON THIS ARTICLE:

Posted by Bill Godshall on 08 Sep 09 11:51 AM EDT
Other studies have found that youth are far less likely to become daily smokers if neither parent smokes and if there is a smokefree policy in the home. While this study found that children of nonsmoking parents were far less likely to begin smoking, to increase smoking, and to become daily smokers (than children of smoking parents), the study's authors failed to report the results of this singularly important finding, but rather combined it with an vague classification dubbed "positive family management". The authors only cited 2 of the 14 questions used to assess "famiy management" skills, and failed to indicate if they considered (i.e. inquired about) a smokefree home policy. Perhaps the most important finding of this study (which wasn't reported in the abstract) was that the Raising Healthy Children program had very little if any impact on youth smoking behaviors, which is consistent with other studies on the impact of substance abuse prevention programs on youth.

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