Also, teenagers who say they can quit anytime are more likely to develop the habit than those who don’t believe quitting is so easy, shows the study published in the May issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
But “adolescents who were highly receptive to tobacco advertising and who believed that they could quit anytime had the highest risk of progressing to established smoking,” says study author Won S. Choi, Ph.D., M.P.H., of the University of Kansas Medical Center.
The study included 5,531 teenagers who were interviewed in 1993 and 3,376 who were interviewed again in 1996. Assessment of receptivity to cigarette advertising was based on questions about the teens’ favorite ads and willingness to use promotional items from cigarette companies.
Choi and colleagues found that 32 percent of those who had reported trying cigarettes in 1993 had become regular smokers by 1996. Those who were receptive to cigarette ads were 70 percent more likely to have progressed to established smoking. The teens who said they could quit anytime were twice as likely to have become regular smokers.
“It is not the mere exposure to the advertisements that has the greatest influence, but rather the process of accepting the image and eventually the smoking behavior that goes with it,” Choi says of understanding how cigarette ads affect adolescents and youths.
The finding that teen tobacco use is greatly influenced by a combination of advertising receptivity and the easy-to-quit perception should lead anti-smoking campaigns to focus on the addictive nature of the habit in their advertising, the researchers suggest.
“Several studies have shown the influence of tobacco advertising in encouraging adolescents to take up smoking and the results have been consistent. This study’s results provide additional evidence that tobacco advertising is also an important predictor of progression from experimentation to established smoking,” the authors say.
The study was funded with grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the American Cancer Society, the University of California Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program and the National Cancer Institute.
The American Journal of Preventive Medicine, sponsored by the Association of Teachers of Preventive Medicine and the American College of Preventive Medicine, is published eight times a year by Elsevier Science. The Journal is a forum for the communication of information, knowledge and wisdom in prevention science, education, practice and policy. For more information about the Journal, contact the editorial office at (619) 594-7344.
Posted by the Center for the Advancement of Health http://www.cfah.org. For more research news and information, go to our special section devoted to health and behavior in the “Peer-Reviewed Journals” area of Eurekalert!, http://www.eurekalert.org/jrnls/cfah/. For information about the Center, call Ira Allen, iallen@cfah.org (202) 387-2829. To request a copy of this or any other article we have distributed, please E-mail press@cfah.org.
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American Journal of Preventive Medicine