This series looks at four factors that influence people under 18 to smoke: tobacco companies, peer pressure, parents, and teens' ability to make judgments.

You may not believe this is a reason teens smoke.

It's easier to believe that cigarette companies manipulate teens or that peer pressure intimidates teens or that smoking parents encourage teens to smoke. This one is tougher to believe.

Impaired judgment

Teens tend to smoke because their ability to make logical judgments is not fully developed. The judgment of junior high and high school students can be hazy.

Sorry. That's the truth. God made us to mature emotionally and logically during adolescence (and for many years beyond). Teens may have adult-looking bodies but adult maturity takes longer. That's part of the reason teens and parents don't always get along. They think about life differently; their maturity levels are different.

Less mature teens smoke

According to the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), "Empirical [verifiable] data...support the position that minors do not make well-informed choices about smoking" (February, 1997, p. 414). The less mature the person, the more likely he/she will decide to smoke, justifying it for some pretty dumb reasons. And overlooking the dangerous consequences.

For example, in British Columbia researchers (1) found that 72% of teen smokers like to smoke in social situations. Translation: they smoke because their friends smoke. Bad reason. 39% smoke to combat boredom. Translation: smoking is better than doing nothing. Gong! Seventy-eight (78%) of teen smokers smoke to relax or reduce stress. That too is wrong. Smoking increases the risk of adolescent depression (2).

Teens can also lack the ability to evaluate how powerful an addiction smoking is. Most teen smokers think that their willpower is stronger than the pull of cigarettes. Wrong again. The JAMA article noted above reports on high school seniors who were daily smokers. Forty-five percent believed that they would not be smoking within five years. In follow-up studies five to six years later, 73% (that's three out of four!) remained daily smokers.

More mature teens don't smoke

But there's good news. The older teens are, the better their judgment. The Washington Post (January 11, 1999, p. 34) reported that although only 54% of eighth graders see "great risk" of harm in smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, 71% of high school seniors say smoking carries "great risk."

You've probably noticed that some of your friends make poor judgments - about smoking and other things. Actually poor judgment isn't all bad. We learn from the consequences of poor judgment. It's a way toward maturity. But it's a painful way. And that pain is made worse when we make mistakes that we can't undo or at least undo easily.

Say no

So even if smoking doesn't seem like such a bad thing, would you trust the advice of people who are a little older and a little wiser? Would you trust the advice of people who made that mistake? If you smoke, quit. If you don't smoke, don't start.

Pastor Aderman serves the Savior as pastor at Fairview Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is also the editor of LivingBold.

(1) http://preventionsource.bc.ca/psbc/fact/15.html
(2) The University of Cincinnati College of Medicine has found that smoking may actually be the cause of teen depression (http://depression.about.com/library/weekly/...). In a test group of almost 15,000 high school students these researchers found high rates of depression among those who had not been depressed until after they began to smoke. So much for finding escape from problems in a haze of cigarette smoke.