January 27, 2018

Stanton A. Glantz, PhD

Kids who smoke even one day a month are more likely to smoke as young adults

Any smoking in the last 30 days is a standard measure of smoking behavior among adolescents.  This measure is used rather than daily smoking because so few adolescents smoke daily.

Despite the fact that this measure has been used for years, e-cigarette enthusiasts have been critical of the consistent research showing a gateway effect for e-cigarettes leading to cigarette smoking on the grounds than 30 day smoking is not a good measure of adolescent smoking.

Lauren Dutra and I addressed this question, which is important beyond the e-cigarette debate, in our recent paper “Thirty-day smoking in adolescence is a strong predictor of smoking in young adulthood” published in Preventive Medicine. We used the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth which recruited youth ages 12-16 in 1997 and followed them forward in time every year since then.  We found that you who smoked any days in the last month were much more likely to be smokers as young adults.  Kids who just smoked cigarettes one day a month had twice the odds of smoking as young adults as kids who did not smoke at all, with the odds of young adult smoking increasing for youth who smoked more days per month.

Here is the abstract:

Thirty-day smoking, although a widely used measure of adolescent smoking (age 12-16), has been questioned as an accurate measure of young adult (age 26-30) smoking behavior, particularly when critiquing studies linking use of e cigarettes with subsequent cigarette smoking. We used logistic regression to test two measures of 30-day adolescent smoking as predictors of young adult smoking in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997. Adjusting for psychosocial covariates, compared to those who smoked zero days in the past 30 days in adolescence, odds of any past-30-day smoking in young adulthood ranged from 2.85 (95% CI: 1.85-4.37) for those who smoked 1 day to 4.81 (3.50-6.59) for those who smoked daily as adolescents, and adjusted odds of daily smoking in young adulthood ranged from 1.99 (1.24-3.18) to 4.69 (3.42-6.43). Compared with adolescent never smokers, adjusted odds of any past-30-day smoking in young adulthood among adolescent former smokers was 2.11 (1.77-2.53), and among adolescent current smokers, ranged from 3.03 (2.22-4.14) for those who smoked 1-5 cigarettes per month to 8.19 (5.80-11.55) for those who smoked daily. Adjusted odds of daily smoking in young adulthood were 2.49 (2.12-2.91) for adolescent former smokers and, among adolescent current smokers, ranged from 2.54 (1.92-3.37) for those who smoked 1-5 cigarettes per month to 8.65 (6.06-12.35) for those who smoked daily. There is a strong dose-response relationship between 30-day smoking in adolescence-even a single day in the month-and 30-day and daily smoking in young adulthood.

The full citation is Dutra L, Glantz S. Thirty-day smoking in adolescence is a strong predictor of smoking in young adulthood.  Prev Med. 2018 Jan 20. pii: S0091-7435(18)30015-X. doi: 10.1016/j.ypmed.2018.01.014. [Epub ahead of print].  The paper is available here.

 

 

Add new comment

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.