Tobacco Use in Adolescence

Adolescence is a time of exploration, change and discovery, when youth experience the need to assert their autonomy. For many young women, tobacco may become one of the first substances they experiment with: ready access makes it easy to experiment with their parents’ cigarettes, for example. Peer pressure may also push them to try tobacco products. This is why it is so important to educate girls on the far-reaching health effects of tobacco use. Conversations about prevention may be integrated into school systems, to teach girls not to smoke.

A 2012 Health Canada study showed that among youth aged 15–19, some 11% smoked (approximately 233,000 of Canada’s teens). As outlined in Table 1, below, slightly more males than females smoked: 12% compared to 9%. For older youth—young adults aged 20–24—some 20% smoked (about 488,000). Of these, 23% were male and 17% female (Health Canada, 2012).

Health Effects of Tobacco Use for Young Women

According to a 1994 study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), the short-term and long-term consequences of tobacco use for youth and girls can include:

• respiratory effects: lower levels of lung function, a reduced rate of lung growth, and increased risk of lung cancer,
• faster heart rates (2–3 beats a minute more than people who do not smoke), leading to more stress on the heart, and the risk of early signs of heart disease and stroke,
• addiction effects: continuing to smoke throughout adulthood, times more likely to use marijuana, and 22 times more likely to use cocaine (CDC, 1994).
• an increased risk of using other substances: teenagers who smoke are three times more likely to use alcohol, eight times more likely to use marijuana, and 22 times more likely to use cocaine (CDC, 1994).

Research has found that young people who start smoking around the ages of 11 and 12 are likely to be daily smokers by age 18 (Voorhees, Schreiber, Schumann, Biro, & Crawford, 2002). For female youth, the most important factors leading to daily smoking in young adulthood include stressors such as:

• concern about their weight, and a drive for thinness,
• poor behaviour in a number of contexts, such as academic, social, familial, etc.
• having a single parent.

Other stressors for young women (as well as older women) may include peer pressure, family troubles, unhappy love life, difficulties with relationships, etc.