A cognitive developmental approach to smoking prevention

Most smoking prevention programs for middle-schoolers target non-smokers. These programs seek to educate young people about the hazards of smoking, influence young peoples' attitudes toward smoking, and reduce initial experimentation with cigarettes by providing social- and life-skills training. The program described in this chapter incorporates these features and adds a component which explores, in some depth, the nature of the user's response to cigarettes. This component focuses on the young person's physical and psychological reaction to cigarette smoking, and provides a knowledge base which promotes a negative evaluation of that reaction. This component targets all young people, but it is anticipated that it will be especially effective with pre-addictive experimenters who are wondering what smoking can "do for them". One challenge for the future is the development of intervention strategies that have something to offer the young addicted smoker who wishes to quit smoking. These young people are largely unserved by school-based smoking education programs, drug abuse programs, and organized smoking therapies.