Teens, Smoking Parents - Greatest Risk of Smoking..

November 24, 2008 - A new study found that adolescents were at the greatest risk of smoking when their parents began smoking at an early age and the parents' smoking quickly reached high levels and persisted over time.

Jon Macy, project director of the Indiana University Smoking Survey in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences:"Of course, environmental influences on adolescents such as parenting practices, availability of cigarettes in the home, and parents' attitudes about smoking are equally as important and can be addressed with effective public health interventions including family-based smoking prevention programs."

Previous studies, many of which relied on parents' current smoking status only, offered mixed results about whether parental smoking is predictive of adolescent smoking.

Chassin, Laurie; Presson, Clark; Seo, Dong-Chul; Sherman, Steven J.; Macy, Jon; Wirth, R. J.; Curran, PatrickMultiple trajectories of cigarette smoking and the intergenerational transmission of smoking: A multigenerational, longitudinal study of a midwestern community sample, Health Psychology. Vol 27(6), Nov 2008, 819-828. ABSTRACT.

Reference: Smoking, Teens and Their Parents: New Research ,Science Daily, 11/24/2008.