Smoking in adolescence: images and identities

Essential reading for anyone taking on the challenge of smoking education with young people. Looks at smoking from adolescents' own point of view. What emerges from the analysis of two UK studies is that regular smokers are seen as fun-loving and non-conformist; cigarettes are seen as a passport to a fashionable, popular and 'hard' identity. Young people create, and are influenced by, complex images of smokers and non-smokers. This book explores the psychological dimensions of these images such as social environment, family, peers, stress and coping, body image, mood and pleasure. It suggests that anti-smoking interventions should be re-evaluated to take account of this new evidence throughout the school curriculum. It explodes many myths and confirms others. Young people think smokers do have more fun, more sex and go to more parties!