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Parents Important in Teens' Smoking Risk

Friends have a strong influence over whether teenagers move from experimenting with cigarettes to becoming full-fledged smokers -- but so do parents, a new study finds.

The study, which followed 270 teenagers who had become occasional smokers before high school, found that 58 percent made it a daily habit by 12th grade.

But the likelihood of that happening depended partly on friends and parents, according to a study published in the journal Pediatrics.

"We found that parents play an important role in preventing teens' smoking escalation from experimental to daily smoking," Dr. Min Jung Kim, of the University of Washington in Seattle, said.

When friends or parents smoked, teens were more likely to become daily smokers. On the other hand, they were less likely to become habitual smokers when their parents had a "positive family management" style -- monitoring their comings and goings, doling out reasonable punishments for rule-breaking and rewarding good behavior.

Teens whose parents kept tabs on them and were non-smokers themselves had a 31 percent chance of becoming daily smokers. The odds were 71 percent among teenagers with parents who smoked and were more lax in managing their kids' behavior.

Source: Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE57P43R20090826