Young smokers 'most influenced' by family members » Communities » 24dash.com

Young people are more strongly influenced to start smoking by family members with a habit than they are by peer pressure, research revealed today.

An 11-year study into young people's attitudes towards smoking found that 99% of regular young smokers lived with at least one smoker, while less than 15% said they had ever felt under pressure to take up cigarettes.

Children aged 12 to 16 were 44% more likely to start smoking if a member of their household did.

The study also found that young smokers were much more likely to live in poorer areas. Fourteen to 16-year-olds living in an area of high deprivation were 95% more likely to try smoking.

The research, carried out by Liverpool John Moores University for the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation, tracked 250 children from the age of five to 16.

The results will enable health authorities to better target their anti-smoking campaigns, the Foundation said.

Chief executive Dr Rosemary Gillespie said: "The process of becoming a smoker begins very early in childhood and is primarily influenced by exposure to smoke in the home.

"The findings provide us with a vital insight into how young people become smokers and will enable us to continue to develop and implement effective smoking prevention and health education programmes."

Helping parents to stop smoking was the key to preventing their children from taking up cigarettes, she argued.

"The Government needs to apportion its efforts to support parents to stop smoking," she said. "The evidence shows that many people want to stop smoking but they need the support to do that."

Even if they had less influence on a young person's decision to try smoking, it was friends rather than family members who provided the means, the study showed.

More than 80% of those who had tried smoking obtained their first cigarette from a friend.

A similar figure then smoked this cigarette with a friend and not on their own.

Witnessing at first hand the effects of smoking on people's health did not act as a deterrent to the youngsters.

Between 60% and 70% of those who had tried a cigarette had known someone who was suffering from, or had died from, a smoking-related illness.

But this generally happened to people who were older and who had been smoking for a long time, meaning young smokers felt they would not be affected as they had not smoked for long and believed they could stop whenever they wanted to.

Children were most likely to try smoking between the ages of 12 and 13, the study showed.

The proportion who had smoked their first cigarette by the age of 12 was 23%, while 42.7% of those aged 13 had tried one.

Between the ages of 13 and 15, girls smoked consistently more than boys.

Senior Research Fellow Dr Susan Woods, who led the project, said: "Our research adopted a person-centred approach allowing young people to voice their own thoughts and views for more than a decade.

"We have been able to produce a unique, in-depth picture of the social and cultural contexts that have influenced children to smoke over 11 years, which is crucial to understanding the problem of adolescent smoking."