Smoking habits in adolescence: Educating to prevent

The onset of smoking occurs most often in schools, based on socially enabling representations, but predictors of unhealthy lifestyles. In this context, we aimed to characterize the teenage consumer of tobacco profile attending secondary school. Materials and method Conducting a quantitative, descriptive, correlational, analytical and cross-sectional study in a sample of 971 adolescents aged between 14 and 21 years, with implementation of socio-demographic questionnaire, of school context and lifestyles; Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Romano, Negreiro & Martins, 2007); Clinical Inventory of Selfconcept (Vaz Serra, 1984) and Tobacco Consumption Scale (Precioso, 2007). Results The students, aged between 14 and 21, are part of families of medium-high or high yield (56.70%), most are attending the 10th year 38.60%, seconded by the 11th year with 31.50%. We verified that 62.00% of students have positive feelings ("like") in relation to school, 32.00% are indifferent and 6.0% showed negative feelings ("do not like"). The very large majority of adolescents (82.60%) spend less than 30 minutes in travel time to school and only 17.40% take 30 minutes or more on the trip. We verified that 42.60% of students have in their school career one or more flunk, occurring in higher percentage of boys than in girls (47.70% versus 37.40%). In our sample (58.70%) of the adolescents reported that their parents are always available to help with regard to school work and 23.90% consider that it happens often. We found that the usual adolescent smokers reported being influenced by another family member (65.3%), girlfriend/boyfriend (40.8%), and the father (37.0%). As for peer influence we found that 68.0% of current smokers and 56.4% of occasional smokers hang out with three or more smoker friends. The supply of cigarettes happens with a higher prevalence in coffees (73.0%), at school (71.1%) and disco/clubs (56.2%). Conclusion There are several factors associated with the initiation of tobacco consumption, especially among them the peer pressure and parental influence. The more smokers surround adolescents the higher the probability of them starting tobacco consumption. The data points to the need to implement preventive actions in family and in school, promoting in adolescents a healthy lifestyle