The smoking behaviour of grade 10 students

The purpose of this study was to describe smoking behaviour among Grade 10 adolescents and to explore their knowledge of tobacco-related health risks. Seventy-eight males and 71 females, with a mean age of 15.2 years, completed self-administered questionnaires. Twenty-nine percent of the males and 21% of the females claimed to currently smoke, for an overall smoking rate of 26%. Student smoking was not related to gender or to parental smoking. However, students were more likely to smoke if they had a sibling who smoked (p = .0009). As well, students with more friends who smoked were more likely to smoke than students with fewer friends who smoked (p = .0000). The adolescents who smoked had a high level of knowledge regarding health risks of smoking, as did the nonsmoking adolescents. Because experimentation with and initiation of smoking begins in childhood and early teenage years, preventive measures should be started in early childhood.