[Risk factors in experimenting with and consumption of tobacco by 12-14 year-old school students. Attitudes to tobacco in pressure groups].
BACKGROUND
Tobacco is the first addictive substance that adolescents and school-children have contact with. The presence of family members and friends as smokers in their environment is related to tobacco experimentation.


OBJECTIVE
To describe experimentation and consumption of tobacco in secondary school students (ESO); to identify the attitudes related to smoking; and to study the relationship between smoking by family members, friends and teachers and students' own experimentation and consumption.


METHODS
Observational, prospective study at the "Los Cantos" secondary school, Bullas, Murcia, Spain.


METHODS
students from the first, second and third years of ESO, analysed in December 2000 and 2001. The variables studied were collected with the FRISC questionnaire.


RESULTS
The population had 529 students, 293 of them boys, with average age 13.2. A total of 328 had smoked sometime (62%) and 19.1% smoked habitually. Attitudes related with smoking were: "smoking makes you feel better" (P<.001), "smoking is fun" (P<.001), "smoking helps to make friends" (P<.001) and "I'd accept a cigarette from a friend" (P<.001). Tobacco experimentation was related to friends/companions smoking (OR=2.402; 95% CI, 1.591-3.628), to the presence of a mother and older siblings smoking (OR=2.703; 95% CI, 1.574-4.642), and to the presence of friends/companions smoking (OR=6.342; 95% CI, 3.102-12.964).


CONCLUSIONS
Experimentation and consumption of tobacco in the population studied is very high. The most important risk factors for students smoking are the conduct of friends and of older siblings.
García
P
P
Unidad de Investigación y Calidad, Hospital J.M. Morales Meseguer, Murcia, España. perich97@yahoo.es
Carrillo
A
A
Fernández
A
A
Sánchez
J M
JM
D000293:Adolescent; D001290:Attitude; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010379:Peer Group; D011446:Prospective Studies; D012307:Risk Factors; D012309:Risk-Taking; D012907:Smoking / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000523:psychology