University of Michigan 412 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1399
December 18, 1998 (11)
Contact: Diane Swanbrow Phone: (734) 647-4416 [email protected]
www.isr.umich.edu/src/mtf/
Smoking among American teens declines some.
ANN ARBOR---After a long and steady increase in smoking among American teens, which began in the early 90s, smoking rates among secondary school students have started to turn downward, according to the latest results from the Monitoring the Future Study, which has been tracking national smoking rates among American high school seniors annually since 1975, and among eighth- and 10th-grade students each year since 1991.
"Early indications of a turnaround were evident last year," notes Lloyd D. Johnston, the principal investigator of the study and a research scientist at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. "In 1997, eighth- and 10th-grade students began to show very slight improvements, even though use among 12th-graders was still rising. This year all three grade levels, encompassing young people aged 13 to 18, show some drop in smoking." (The one-year decline for eighth-graders' daily cigarette use is not statistically significant, but the two-year decline since 1996 is.)
Johnston and his collaborators, Jerald G. Bachman and Patrick M. O'Malley, observe that the tobacco settlement efforts, along with Administration and Congressional efforts to bring about tobacco control legislation, stimulated a tremendous amount of publicity about smoking and its adverse consequences; and that publicity may have helped change young people's views about smoking. "If that is the case," Johnston observes, "then there is a real question about whether teen smoking will continue to decline in the absence of an intense public debate."
The proportion of students at all three grade levels who see smoking as dangerous has been increasing gradually since 1995, and the proportion who disapprove of smoking has risen a bit since 1996. "While these attitudes and beliefs have not always been good predictors of changes in overall usage levels for cigarettes---even though they are for a number of other drugs---they may be contributing to the downturn in smoking we are seeing now," adds Johnston
The Monitoring the Future study has been sponsored since its inception in 1975 by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, one of the National Institutes of Health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This year, nearly 50,000 students in 422 secondary schools nationwide participated in the survey.
The proportion of students indicating that they smoked at all during the 30 days preceding the survey has fallen by 1.9 percentage points over the past two years among the eighth-graders (to 19.1%) and by 2.8 percentage points among the 10th-graders (to 27.6%) over the same interval. Among 12th-graders, the decline has been smaller: a 1.4 percentage point drop this year to 35.1 percent.
Commenting on the present levels of use, Johnston says: "Despite these modest improvements, there still remain very high rates of smoking among American teens. Nearly one in five eighth-graders smokes, more than one in four 10th-graders. Indeed, over one-third of American students smoke by the time they leave high school. We still have a long way to go just to get back to the unacceptably high rates of smoking that existed at the beginning of the 1990s."
The investigators are particularly concerned that the younger students, who are at the age when smoking often is initiated, are the least likely to appreciate how dangerous smoking can be. Only a little more than half of the eighth-graders (54%) see "great risk" of harm associated with being a pack-a-day smoker. "That's virtually a question with a right-or-wrong answer, and nearly half of these 13- and 14-year-olds get it wrong," according to Johnston. "By 12th-grade, 71 percent of the students see 'great risk' in pack-a-day smoking, but by then the horse may already be out of the barn---many are already smoking."
Subgroup differences. The investigators report that the turnaround in smoking can be seen among male and female students, in all four major regions of the country, at nearly all socioeconomic levels.
College-bound students have shown evidence of a decline in smoking at all three grade levels, whereas those not planning to attend college show more of a leveling, so far, rather than a decline. The improvements also have been concentrated among those whose parents are well-educated, and among those living in more urban areas.
The availability of cigarettes to minors remained high in 1998, according to both eighth- and 10th-graders. (Twelfth-graders are not asked the question, since availability for them is assumed to be nearly universal.) Nearly three out of every four eighth-graders (73.6 percent), and nine of every ten 10th-graders (88.1 percent) say that cigarettes would be "fairly easy" or "very easy" to get if they wanted some. As high as these rates are, they actually reflect some decline from even higher levels two years ago. Cigarette availability has declined by 3.3 percentage points among eighth-graders and 3.2 percentage points among 10th-graders since 1996.
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The study, titled "Monitoring the Future," began in 1975 at the University of Michigan's Survey Research Center with annual surveys of American high school seniors. Beginning in 1991, similar surveys of nationally representative samples of eighth- and 10th-graders have been conducted annually. At each grade level the students are drawn to be representative of all students in public and private secondary schools nationwide. They complete self-administered questionnaires given to them in their classrooms in the spring of the year, by U-M personnel. The 1998 eighth-grade sample about 18,700 students in 149 schools, the 10th-grade sample about 15,400 students in 129 schools, and the 12th-grade sample contained about 15,800 students in 144 schools. In all, nearly 50,000 students in 422 public and private secondary schools were surveyed in 1998.
Methodological note. For the first time in 1998, in half of the eighth- and 10th-grade schools surveyed, the questionnaires administered were made fully anonymous (as opposed to confidential, but with some identifying information being gathered on a tear-off card). Specifically, the matched half-sample of schools beginning their two-year participation in Monitoring the Future in 1998 received the anonymous questionnaires, while the half-sample participating in the study for their second and final year continued to get the confidential questionnaires. A careful examination of the 1998 results based on the two equivalent half-samples at grade 8 and at grade 10, revealed no effect of this methodological change among 10th-graders, and only a very modest difference in the self-reported rates of alcohol and marijuana use among the eighth-graders (with prevalence rates slightly higher in the anonymous condition). For cigarettes, this change in method appeared to have no effect on!
self-reported rates of daily use or half-pack per day use, and to have had only a very small effect on 30-day prevalence. Thus, for example, the 30-day prevalence of cigarette use among eighth-graders is shown to have fallen by 0.3 percentage points between 1997-1998; however, the half-sample of eighth-grade schools receiving exactly the same type of questionnaire that was used in 1997 showed a slightly greater decline of 0.6 percentage points. Finally, lifetime cigarette prevalence is shown as falling by 1.6 percentage points between 1997 and 1998, but in the half-sample of schools with a constant methodology, it fell by 2.6 percentage points.
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