Smoking Habits of Adolescents in Dubai

Causes, Effects, and Recommendations

Definition of Adolescents

To start evaluate the causes of smoking habits within adolescents, is needed to define our group of study. The word adolescents comes from the Latin word Adolecere, which means "to grow up" (Wikipedia). According to Cambridge Dictionary, adolescent is a young person who is developing into an adult. It means people between childhood and adulthood. Because the maturity varies from person to person, it is difficult to come with a specific edge range. Each person can have his or her own understand about adolescent. In this report, all the adolescents interviewed have between 18 and 21years old and are university students living in Dubai-UAE. In total, 15 students were interviewed, being 7 females and 8 males.

Three Characteristics of Adolescent Smokers

Understanding the main characteristics of the adolescents is possible to formulate strategies to diminish consume of cigarettes within the group.

These are the three main characteristics:

* Most of the smokers have someone in the family that also smokes.

According to the article Parental Smoking Cessation and Adolescent Smoking, teenagers usually follow their parent's habits. When one or both parents smoke, is more likely that the sun or daughters will smoke sometime in the future (Chassin, Laurie, Clark C. Presson, and Steven J. Sherman 486). In the interview, 8/15 of the teenagers said that at least one of the parents smoke (See appendix).

* Most of the smokers have physichological issue (s).

The smoking habit in many cases is associated with stress, anxiety, and depression (Rosario, Margareth, Eric W. Schrimshaw, and Joyce Hunter). For Robert Needlman, associate professor of pediatrics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, during adolescence is when people face most stress. This is because in this period of life, adolescents suffer a quick chance in many aspects of their life (Needlman). For many of them, the cigarette acts as an alleviator of the tension because the nicotine brings the sensation of relaxing. 10/15 people interviewed mentioned they smoke more when they are under pressure, when they have some problems, or during exams in the university (See appendix).

* Many adolescents start smoking in the early ages.

Nearly all first use of tobacco occurs before high school graduation.

-- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

According to the interview, the average for males to start smoking is about 13 years old and for females about 14 years old (See appendix). Some of them do not really understand or do not take serious the effects of the cigarettes for their health. Moreover, some teenagers think they will easily quit smoking (Hoss, Hana and Frank J. Chaloupka 2).

Main Motivations to Start Smoking

Some of the motivations for teenagers to start smoke are: environment and social