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Cigarette Smoking Continues to
Rise
Among American Teenagers in 1996
University of Michigan Press Release
December 19, 1996
ANN ARBOR—Cigarette smoking continued
to rise among American secondary school students for the fifth year in a row, according to
the most recent annual, national survey of 8th-, 10th-, and 12th-grade students.
Over the past year (between 1995 and 1996) the percentage
of students reporting any cigarette smoking in the 30 days prior to the survey rose by
about 10 percent among both eighth- and 10th-graders. Over the past five years (1991-1996)
the proportion reporting smoking in the prior 30 days has risen by nearly one-half among
the eighth- graders (from 14 percent to 21 percent) and 10th-graders (from 21 percent to
30 percent). Among the 12th-graders the proportional increases have been less, but still
appreciable. Current smoking (i.e., smoking in the prior 30-days) rose by more than
one-fifth since 1991 (from 28 percent to 34 percent) among 12th-graders, although the
increase in the most recent year was only one-half of one percentage point (0.5 percent).
In sum, in 1996 current smoking rates are 21 percent
among eighth-graders (13-14 years old), 30 percent among 10th-graders (15-16 years old),
and 34 percent among 12th-graders (17-18 years old). These rates are impressively high,
especially when compared to the fact that about 25 percent of all adults are classified as
current smokers according to the National Health Interview Survey.
These findings will be contained in a forthcoming report
by University of Michigan (U-M) social psychologists Lloyd Johnston, Patrick O'Malley, and
Jerald Bachman, based on 22 years of national surveys as part of the Monitoring the Future
Study. The study is conducted at the U-M Institute for Social Research and has been funded
under a series of research grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, one of the
National Institutes of Health.
"Because young people tend to carry the smoking
habits they develop in adolescence into adulthood, the substantial and continuing
increases in teen smoking bode ill for the eventual longevity and health of this
generation of American young people," concludes Johnston. "Hundreds of thousands
of children from each graduating class are likely to suffer appalling diseases, and to die
prematurely, as a result of the smoking habits they are developing in childhood and
adolescence."
The investigators note that substantial increases in
smoking have been occurring in virtually every sociodemographic group; among boys and
girls, among those bound for college and those not, among respondents in all regions of
the country and in urban and rural areas, among all socioeconomic levels, and among those
in the three major racial/ethnic groups (white, African Americans, and Hispanic
Americans). "No one's kids are safe from this resurgence in smoking," warns
Johnston, "so all parents should be concerned and alerted."
Although smoking rates are increasing among all groups
surveyed, there are some important subgroup differences in smoking rates; for example,
respondents without future college plans are more likely to smoke than those who have such
plans; those growing up in the South are somewhat less likely to smoke than those growing
up in other regions of the country; and African American youngsters are substantially less
likely to smoke than white youngsters. (Hispanic Americans tend to be in the middle.)
Asked to comment on the likely causes of the upturn in
smoking, Johnston says: "The breadth of the increase suggests that broad cultural
influences are at work here—influences that reach virtually every sector of society. Two
that come immediately to mind are the massive advertising and promotional efforts of the
tobacco industry, and the extensive portrayal of smoking by role models in the media,
particularly in movies." The advertising and promotional budgets of the tobacco
industry totaled some 6 billion dollars by 1993, and the investigators point to the
attractiveness to young people of much of the advertising content, and many of the
promotional items.
"While there are as yet no hard statistics to prove
that there has been a great increase in the portrayal of smoking in movies and other
entertainment programming, more cursory observations by a number of people suggest that
this has been the case," according to Johnston.
Young people continue to report cigarettes as being
easily available to them: 77 percent of the eighth-graders, who are 13 or 14 years old,
report that cigarettes would be "very easy" or "fairly easy" for them
to get, and 91 percent of the 10th-graders say the same thing.
While pack-a-day smoking is still disapproved by the
majority of youngsters, there has been a steady decline since the early 90s in the
proportions saying they disapprove. Since 1991, the proportion of eighth-graders saying
they disapprove of pack-a-day smoking has fallen from 83 percent to 77 percent, the
proportion of 10th-graders from 79 percent to 72 percent, and the proportion of
12th-graders from 71 percent to 67 percent. Among 12th-graders, for whom longer-term
trends are available, the proportion disapproving of smoking is at its lowest level since
1978.
While the degree of risk associated with being a
pack-a-day smoker has changed little, many youngsters do not see a great risk in smoking
that much. In 1996 only 50 percent of the eighth-graders reported that a pack-a-day smoker
runs a great risk of harming himself or herself "physically or in other ways,"
only 58 percent of the 10th-graders and 68 percent of the 12th-graders reported seeing
such risk. "As we have seen, a great deal of smoking is initiated at a very young
age, when youngsters seem to be least aware of the dangers," Johnston notes.
The study, titled "Monitoring the Future," is
also widely known as the National High School Senior Survey. It has been conducted under a
series of investigator-initiated research grants from the National Institute on Drug
Abuse. Surveys have been carried out each year since 1975 by the University of Michigan
Institute for Social Research. In 1996, the seniors comprised about 16,000 students in 144
public and private high schools nationwide, selected to be representative of all seniors
in the continental United States. They completed self-administered questionnaires given to
them in their classrooms by U-M personnel in the spring of the year. Beginning in 1991,
similar surveys of nationally representative samples of eighth- and 10th-graders have been
conducted annually. The 1996 eighth-grade sample contained about 18,000 students in 152
schools, and the 10th-grade sample contained about 17,000 students in 139 schools. In all,
approximately 50,000 students in 435 public and private secondary schools were surveyed in
1996.
Source:
University of Michigan. Cigarette smoking continues to rise among American teen-agers in
1996. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan News and Information Services; December
19, 1996 (News Release).
Data Tables of Cigarette Smoking
Trends and Figures
from the University of Michigan
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