Parents important influence in preventing their children from using tobacco..

March 5, 2009 - The results of a Swedish study showed that a growing majority of adolescents support strong parental intervention to help them refrain from tobacco, but preferably not in a punitive manner. The most effective actions parents could take include dissuading their children from smoking, not smoking themselves and not allowing their children to smoke at home. Both non-smokers and smokers supported the idea of parental action in a similar way. Eighty-nine percent of the adolescents expected their parents to act against smoking and 85% against snus use.

Swedish national data were collected in 1987, 1994 and 2003 by a questionnaire from mailed to homes, in total to 13500 persons. The annual samples, which were random and national representative, consisted of 4500 young people aged 13, 15 and 17 yr, 1500 individuals per age group.

PAPER: Maria Nilsson, Lars Weinehall, Erik Bergstrom, Hans Stenlund and Urban Janlert, "Adolescent's perceptions and expectations of parental action on children's smoking and snus use; national cross sectional data from three decades" BMC Public HealthABSTRACT

Reference: Teenagers do listen to their parents when it comes to smoking, labspaces.net, 3/4/2009.

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