Anxious adults vs. cool children: children's views on smoking and addiction

Tobacco addiction represents a major public health problem, and most addict ed smokers take up the habit during adolescence. We need to know why. With the aim of gaining a better understanding of the meanings smoking and tobac co addiction hold for young people, 85 focused interviews were conducted wi th adolescent children from economically deprived areas of Northern Ireland . Through adopting a qualitative approach within the community rather than the school context, the adolescent children were given the opportunity to f reely express their views in confidence. Children seem to differentiate con ceptually between child smoking and adult smoking. Whereas adults smoke to cope with life and are thus perceived by children as lacking control over t heir consumption, child smoking is motivated by attempts to achieve the sta tus of cool and hard, and to gain group membership. Adults have personal re asons for smoking, while child smoking is profoundly social. Adults are per ceived as dependent on nicotine, and addiction is at the core of the childr en's understanding of adult smoking. Child smoking, on the other hand, is s een as oriented around social relations so that addiction is less relevant. These ideas leave young people vulnerable to nicotine addiction. It is cle arly important that health promotion efforts seek to understand and take in to account the actions of children within the context of their own world-vi ew to secure their health. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserv ed.