Why do our children smoke?

Press, 19 September 1985, Page 11

Why do our children smoke?

They know about the health hazards, but it does not stop them ...

“With a mother who smokes and a father dead set against it, smoking was a somewhat dangerous thing to try. I think my father’s attempts to discourage my mother from smoking (which didn’t work) must have rubbed off on us, for today none of us children smoke."

“I can go home and not have a cigarette, or even want one, in the three weeks’ holiday. Yet when I come back to my flat, where my friends and flatmates smoke, I immediately have one." Psychologists Jane and James Ritchie quote these students in the section on smoking in their handbook “The Dangerous Age: Surviving Adolescence in New Zealand.”

Using figures from the 1981 census and a variety of studies, they say the evidence suggests that about a third of young people have begun smoking before adolescence; another 20 per cent will take it up during this period. According to Jane Ritchie’s new study of 10-to-16-year-olds in Hamilton, more than half of the smokers started before the age of 10.

The study also confirms that, while the. percentage of boys smoking has decreased from the 19605, the percentage of girls has shown a marked and persistent increase. By the age of 15, 45 per cent of them smoke, she found.

For those who are already smoking at earlier ages, family models are probably the most important factor, the Ritchies say. But during adolescence those who smoke do so with others, and peer influence is probably more important, along with addiction, in

maintaining the habit. They refer to research showing that 60 per cent of young light smokers and a quarter of heavy smokers did not enjoy smoking at all. All the adolescent smokers studied knew smoking was harmful to health, and almost all believed it caused cancer. Almost all thought of it as a waste of money. Yet none of this stopped them smoking. They simply smoked because those around them smoked, to be part of the gang, the Ritchies say. In Jane Ritchie’s study, both sexes agreed that young people smoke because their friends smoke and because they wish to show off. Boys are more likely than girls to give the desire to be grown up and the example of parents

smoking as a reason; girls are more likely to see an element of rebellion in young people smoking. The students were also asked why they thought people their own age chose not to smoke.. Boys, it was found, are more likely to be concerned about the expense of smoking, and about parental and teacher disapproval; girls are more likely to see smoking as a dirty habit. However, non-smokers were generally better acquainted than smokers with information on the health risks of smoking, she found. “It seems to me that though certain health consequences of smoking are very well known (lung cancer, the dangers of smoking in pregnancy), the over-all effects of smoking are not. Less than half of the sample know that one in three smokers will die of their

habit; only 12 per cent of the girls and 14 per cent of the boys know that smoking causes more deaths than road accidents.

“Smoking is not something that most of the students do every day, and in fact, only about 10 per cent of smokers say they could not stop. Only a third say they intend to smoke when older.

“This suggests that efforts should be made now to break the pattern of smoking behaviours in these young people before it is too late and they become truly addicted,” says Jane Ritchie.

Information alone is probably not an effective, means of discouraging smoking, especially amongst young people, Jane and James Ritchie feel.

They maintain that public health education has not been noticeably effective, probably because of the setting: schools generally ban smoking and therefore readily become places where rebellion against authority is expressed through smoking.

“We believe that not only public health authorities but parents have the right and the responsibility to break the cycle — whether they themselves smoke or not,” they say. The majority of children in Jane Ritchie’s study say their parents are aware of their smoking. Parents’ reactions are generally negative, but about a quarter of the sample were reported to be apathetic, and about 15 per cent are permissive.

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