preview

Teens And Smoking Essay

Good Essays

Teens and Smoking

Abstract

Cigarette smoking is of interest to the National Institute on Drug Abuse both because of the public health problems associated with this form of substance abuse and because this behavior represents a prototypic dependence process. In the past few years the government has made every effort to reach the masses, in an attempt to curb the exploitation of tobbacco use, and its acceptance among
Americas Youngsters. However, cigarette smoking among adolescents is on the rise. The premise that the behavior of adolescents is influenced by the behavior of their parents is central to many considerations of health and social behavior
(Ausubel, Montemayor, & Svajiian, 1977; Bandura & Walters, 1963). Many young …show more content…

Yet, even though teenagers sometimes smoke to gain independence, and to be part of the crowd parental influence plays the strongest role as to whether or their children will smoke, Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA), 1991.
Children are exposed to and influenced by the parents, siblings, and the media long before peer pressure will become a factor. Mothers should not smoke during pregnancy, nicotine, which crosses the placental barrier, may affect the female fetus during an important period of development so as to predispose the brain to the addictive influence of nicotine. Prenatal exposure to smoking has previously been linked with impairments in memory, learning, cognition, and perception in the growing child. (National Institute of Drug Abuse, 1995)
Subsequent follow-up after 12 years suggest that regardless of the amount or duration of current or past maternal smoking, the strongest correlation between maternal smoking and a daughter's smoking occurred when the mother smoked during pregnancy. NIDA also reported that of 192 mothers and their first born adolescents with a mean age of 12 1/2, the analysis revealed that 26.6% of the girls whose mother smoked while pregnant had smoked in the past year.

The 1991 smoking prevalence estimate of 25.7% is virtually no different from the previous year's estimate of 25.5%. If current trends persist, we will not meet
one

Get Access