This study examined smoking intensity among secondary school adolescent smokers. A total of 800 students, made up of 685 males and 115 females who have at least tasted a cigarette once, from twenty secondary schools (5 private and 15 public secondary schools) in Benin City, Nigeria participated in the study. A questionnaire was used in collecting…

Objective: Disruptive behavior disorder (DBD) is a well-known risk factor for substance abuse and delinquent behavior in adolescence. Therefore, the long-term preventive effects of treatment of DBD in middle childhood on beginning substance use and delinquency in early adolescence were investigated. Method: Children with DBD (8-13 years old) had…

Background: Previous investigations have shown that low academic achievers are more likely to smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, and use marijuana and other illicit drugs. This study investigated the relationship between academic performance and substance use among public high school students in Mississippi. Methods: The sampling frame for the 2003…

The use of illicit and licit drugs continues to be a major public health concern. Many prevention and drug education programs address this issue by attempting to enhance self-esteem. The idea is that increased levels of self-esteem will serve as a protective factor in decreasing the motivation and increasing the resistance to use drugs. This study…

This article describes a meta-analysis of the relationship between the Five-Factor Model of personality and smoking. The results, based on nine studies and a total of 4,730 participants, show that smoking was associated with the following five-factor traits: low conscientiousness, low agreeableness, and high neuroticism. Smokers outside Canada and…

The aim of this population-based survey was to compare the prevalence of selected risk behaviors between students present or absent on the day of a school-based survey. The study population was a representative sample of all students of secondary schools in the Seychelles (Indian Ocean). Students absent on the day of the survey were traced and…

We describe self-reported sources of income and expenditure, and the association between part-time employment and spending on fast food, alcohol, cigarettes, and gambling for a sample of 3434 New Zealand (NZ) secondary school students (mean age 15.0 years). Disposable income was usually received from parents and guardians, but nearly 40% of…

The authors present results of a randomized clinical trial of the efficacy of extended treatment with bupropion SR in producing longer term cigarette smoking cessation. Adult smokers (N = 362) received open-label treatment (11 weeks) that combined relapse prevention training, bupropion SR, and nicotine patch followed by extended treatment (14…

This investigation describes what smoking means to adolescents, and attempts to better understand it as a rite of passage. Applying a social ontology to an often-individualized issue, interviews were conducted with 20 adolescent smokers between the ages of 13 and 19. Results show that adolescents possess detailed information about the risks of…

Ethnographic research, including interviews, focus groups, and observations were conducted to explore gendered dimensions of smoking among low level smokers, including the acceptability of smoking in different contexts; reasons for smoking; the monitoring of self and friends' smoking; and shared smoking as a means of communicating concern and…

Decisions about using addictive substances are influenced by distractions by addiction-related stimuli, of which the user might be unaware. The addiction-Stroop task is a paradigm used to assess this distraction. The empirical evidence for the addiction-Stroop effect is critically reviewed, and meta-analyses of alcohol-related and smoking-related…

Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, various demographic, psychological, educational, and family variables were explored as predictors of pregnancy resolution. Only 2 of the 17 variables examined were significantly associated with pregnancy resolution (risk-taking and the desire to leave home). After controlling…

The placement of tobacco retail outlets near schools (especially elementary schools) has potentially harmful implications for youth, since kids get the message that smoking is acceptable. In order to determine how easy it is for youth to buy cigarettes, the Youth Tobacco Project was launched in October, 1995. To find out how accessible cigarettes…

This packet of materials on smoke-free child care contains: (1) "Smoke Free Child Care," a booklet warning child care providers about the dangers of second-hand smoke and the fact that children often imitate adult behaviors, such as smoking; (2) "Smoke-Free Child Care: A Booklet for Family Day Care Providers," warning about the…

Results from the study indicate that the awareness-of-rationalizations procedure is more effective in convincing discontented smokers of the personal relevance of the health hazards of smoking than the control procedure, which presents the same specific information to refute typical rationalizations. (Author/PC)