Social environment and smoking initiation

This paper reports exploratory research to predict smoking initiation prospectively as a function of both personal (peer and family) and more macro (school and community) social environment. At the macro level, older peer smoking by school system and school board by school system were significant predictors of smoking onset. At the personal level, the effect of gender varied with time. Males began to smoke earlier than females, but females had higher onset rates in the period from the end of Grade 7 to the end of Grade 9. Significant sibling and peer influences replicate the consistent findings in the smoking initiation area. Implications for the longitudinal study of the smoking onset process are given.