Are School Environmental and Individual Factors Independently Associated with Smoking Behavior and Susceptibility to Initiate Smoking among Never Smokers? Evidence from the Global Tobacco Surveillance System (GTSS)

Nathan R. Jones, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Charles Warren, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

Tobacco use is one of the world’s leading causes of preventable death. If current trends continue, tobacco-related mortality could double in the next decade and more than 10 million people per year will die as a result of tobacco consumption by 2020. Initiation of tobacco use occurs primarily in adolescence and most research on smoking uptake focuses on pre-teen and teen age groups. A large proportion of children in these age groups attend school on a regular basis. The role that school environment and peer influences play in an individual’s decision to start smoking is a relatively new area of inquiry and has not been explored in many developing countries. This paper uses information collected from students, teachers, and administrators to examine how characteristics of students and their school environments are associated with current smoking rates and susceptibility to smoking initiation among those who do not smoke.