Age-related differences in adolescent smokers' and nonsmokers' assessmentsof the relative addictiveness and health harmfulness of cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana

The present work was undertaken to determine how general beliefs about vari ous substances and substance use behaviors change during adolescence. Secon dary analyses were carried out on the telephone interview responses of 1,20 0 adolescent smokers and nonsmokers between the ages of 12 and 17. The spec ific beliefs regarding which substances were hardest to stop using and whic h were the most harmful to one's health by smoking status and age were comp ared using Chi-squared analyses for univariate comparisons, and polytomous logistic regression for multivariate analyses. Results revealed that the yo ungest cohort believed that marijuana was the substance most difficult to s top using while the oldest cohort believed that cigarettes were the hardest to stop using. A similar pattern was observed regarding which substance wa s the most harmful to one's health. While smokers believed that cigarettes were both the hardest to stop using and the most harmful, nonsmokers were d ivided between cigarettes and marijuana as the hardest to stop using, and i ndicated that marijuana rather than cigarettes, were most harmful. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for substance abuse prevention and the development of relative risk assessments.