Researchers collected saliva samples from 2,000 middle school students to determine which children were smokers. By the time the early smokers were eighteen years old, 58 percent had engaged in two or more problem behaviors, including binge drinking, selling drugs, abusing drugs, and dropping out of school.
Those children who had not tried smoking in middle school were one and a half times more likely to have grade point averages of 3.0 (B) or above and to live in an intact family.
This study appears in the Journal of Adolescent Health.
Labels: smoking, smokers, middle_school
Posted By: Aspen Education Group