Beyond the statistics of adolescent smoking

Statistical studies can identify the demographic characteristics of the adolescent smoking population but cannot reveal how clusters of demographic categories combine in the culture of the community to form salient social categories, or how social processes link these categories to smoking and smoking-related behavior. Because smoking and smoking-related behavior function as a key social symbol, anti-smoking campaigns that are based on an inaccurate understanding of the social context in which smoking occurs can reinforce this behavior. Participant observation in a suburban high school suggests that adolescents begin smoking as part of a complex symbolic process growing out of the process of social differentiation between future members of the working class on the one hand and the middle class on the other. It points out inadequacies in two existing anti-smoking programs in the schools that result from ignoring the social dynamics of smoking.