Troubled behaviour may lead to smoking

First graders who misbehave in school are more likely to be regular smokers when they grow up. Researchers from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore followed a group of first graders for 15 years and found that kids who misbehaved were 66 per cent more likely to be daily smokers later. The findings suggest that early action may help stop some teens from picking up the habit, and abandoning it. Parents and teachers need to pay attention to the expressions of the mental and behavioural profile, such as misbehaviour. Previous researches have shown that children with behaviour or antisocial problems are more likely to use drugs later in life. To investigate whether the same may be true for smoking, the investigators asked first grade teachers in mid-Atlantic public schools to report the behaviour patterns of 1,692 students. Children were rated as misbehaving whether they started fights, broke rules, stole, teased, were stubborn, yelled or hurt other people, or had trouble accepting authority. The researchers contacted the subjects 15 years later and asked them if they had ever tried cigarettes or had become hooked on them. Dependence was measured according to the factors that, how soon did the teens smoked after waking up, whether they found it difficult to hang out in non-smoking environments, and the number of cigarettes they smoked each day. It was found that more than half of the former first graders said they had tried smoking at least once. Among these ever-smokers, 50 per cent were not considered dependent, 31 per cent were considered moderately dependent, and 19 per cent were more severely affected, defined as needing to smoke right after they woke up and smoking even when they were seriously ill. Those with the highest level of behaviour problems were significantly more likely to become seriously hooked on the habit. The reasons why smoking is linked to early childhood bad behaviour remain unclear, but it is believed that both are due to a third factor. For instance, genetic traits or early experiences may predispose a child to both behaviour problems and a tendency to experiment with drugs. Some experts have proposed that kids who misbehave may be more likely to try cigarettes at a very early age, at a critical developmental period, which may make them more vulnerable to later addiction.