Childhood predictors of smoking in adolescence

The smoking rate among adolescents in the context of anti-smoking campaigns is troubling. Predictor of teenage smoking that are commonly cited are parental smoking during childhood, peer pressure during adolescence, and larger lung volumes.

Becklake and colleagues investigated these and other possible predictors of teenage cigarette smoking and found that salivary cotinine, a measure of uptake of environmental tobacco smoke, was a significant predictor.

It is possible that efficient absorption in childhood of nicotine from second-hand tobacco smoke renders adolescents susceptible to nicotine-seeking behaviour.

In a related commentary, Anthonisen and Murray wonder whether such findings mean that future anti-smoking interventions will be directed at susceptible subpopulations rather than the population at large.

p. 377 Childhood predictors of smoking in adolescence: a follow-up study of Montreal schoolchildren
– M.R. Becklake et al
http://www.cmaj.ca/misc/press/pg377.pdf

p. 382 A new childhood pathway for transmission of an increased likelihood of smoking?
– N. Anthonisen, R. Murray
http://www.cmaj.ca/misc/press/pg382.pdf

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