Despite increased efforts by state and federal officials, teen smoking has risen during the past decade. To try and determine why, scientists from Emory University and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention collected data from 9,215 adults living in the San Diego area.

Parental divorce was found to be one of the "adverse childhood experiences" that greatly impacted whether survey respondents had ever smoked, and how heavily they smoked. In addition, divorce played an important part in how early teens began smoking--twice as many respondents with divorced parents had begun smoking by age 14 as had respondents with parents who were not divorced.

Researchers suggested that early smoking by kids who experienced difficult childhoods may occur because the nicotine in cigarettes may be a form of self-medication. In other words, "nicotine [may be] their pharmacological coping device."

Source: The Family in America, New Research, 4/00

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