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Teens in part-time jobs start
smoking early
2 October, 2007
High-school students who do part-time
jobs for pocket money may be more
likely to start smoking than teens who
do not join the after-school/weekend
workforce.
The study of Grade 10 and 11 students
in Baltimore, Maryland, the United
States, shows that those who took jobs
in retail outlets and fast-food or
other restaurants had a greater
inclination to start smoking and that
the trend was strongest among teens
who worked the most hours per week.
Rajeev Ramchand, a psychiatric
epidemiologist and lead author of the
study, said that, of those who did not
smoke at Grade 10, kids who began
working were at least three times more
likely to start smoking than kids who
did not start working.
It was found that those children who
worked more than 10 hours a week on an
average had an earlier age of
initiation – that is, they started to
smoke ahead of their peers.
Rajeev Ramchand conducted the study
with colleagues while he was a
graduate student at the Johns Hopkins
School of Medicine in Baltimore. He
now works for the Rand Corporation.
The researchers speculate a number of
reasons for the change in the smoking
status. For one, teens may be exposed
on the job to older youth or to adults
who are more likely to smoke and where
smoking is more common and acceptable.
Another reason may be that the teens
on work have the money to buy
cigarettes, which they may not have
had before.
Besides, taking a part-time job also
changes a teen’s relationship with
family members – a factor that can
strongly affect behavior.
Rajeev Ramchand explains, “When kids
start working, we know from previous
research, that their bonds with their
parents tend to weaken. So whereas in
the past some have proposed that your
bonds to your parents actually prevent
you from drug-using behaviors like
tobacco smoking, when you work, a
parent kind of releases those bonds
and ... that freedom may increase the
likelihood to smoke.”
The work itself may also contribute to
the decision to pick up the habit.
Part-time jobs, often repetitive and
monotonous, may compel a teen to take
a smoke break as a means of escaping
boredom.
Yet another factor could be stress,
according to Ramchand. “Kids don’t
report that their jobs themselves are
very stressful, but what they will
report is that managing their time and
their responsibilities – getting all
their homework done, sports if that’s
part of their lives, as well as their
work responsibilities. The combination
of those things creates stress. And,
they may turn to cigarettes as a kind
of self-medication to relieve that
stress.”
The research, published on September
28, 2007, in the American Journal of
Public Health, is a part of a larger
ongoing study of almost 800 children
in Baltimore who were enrolled in
Grade 1.
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