Young People's Concepts of Smoking Addiction

This book explores how young people conceptualise addiction to smoking and, the relationship between young people's addiction beliefs and intentions to smoke cigarettes. Addiction to smoking is a major health problem, not just for adults, but also for young smokers, up to 60% of whom are dependent on nicotine. However, anti-smoking prevention efforts targeted at young people generally emphasise ill-health effects and little attention is paid to addiction education which is generally considered relevant only to adult smoking and cessation efforts. As a consequence, young people appear to have many misconceptions and unrealistic ideas about addiction, which possibly influence their initial decisions to take up smoking. Understanding these conceptions is important for anti-smoking education and may assist in the development of primary prevention and cessation intervention strategies targeted at youth populations.