Smoking in Adolescence

In contrast to medical orthodoxy, Smoking in Adolescence looks at smoking from the adolescents’ own points of view, at why more girls smoke than boys, at the factors which influence adolescents to take up smoking. What emerges is that regular smokers are seen as fun-loving and nonconformist; cigarettes are a passport to a fashionable, popular and ‘hard’ identity. Concepts of adolescent development and problem behaviour, sensation-seeking and risk-taking are explored, followed by an examination of smoking in an international context by means of a review of major published studies. The authors’ own research provides new approaches, and the influence of social environments, family and peers is considered. Barbara Lloyd and Kevin Lucas explore adolescents’ reports of pleasure and stress control, concepts of smoking images and identities and suggest how anti-smoking interventions should be re-evaluated to take account of this new evidence throughout the school curriculum. Smoking in Adolescence will be of practical interest to teachers, youth workers, health professional and parents as well as students of psychology.

Author Biography

Dr Barbara Lloyd is Senior Research Fellow in Social Psychology at the University of Sussex. Her publications include Sex and Gender (1986, with John Archer)

Dr Kevin Lucas is Health Promotion Policy Analyst with East Sussex, Brighton and Hove Health Authority, and Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Sussex.