To follow is a description of cigarette smoking behaviour among teens in B.C. as well as the relationships between cigarette smoking and demographic characteristics.

Results of the base survey indicate that current cigarette smokers make up 20% of the teen population, while former smokers represent 4% and never smokers 76%. Compared to provincial results, the teen population has a much higher proportion of beginners (4% vs. 1%) and lifetime abstainers (54% vs. 30%). It should be kept in mind that this is very early on in their lifetime and does not indicate that they will always be lifetime abstainers, especially considering the fact that 17% of current smokers began smoking after the age of 18.

The proportion of former smokers is low compared to the entire province (4% vs. 28%) indicating that teens have not yet decided to quit or have been ineffective in their attempts to do so. Interestingly, the proportion of former smokers within the past year is the same for teens as for the entire province (2%) showing that they are trying to quit but they are not being transformed into long-term former smokers. Quitting is discussed in detail later in this report.

The base survey results also show that 70% of teen smokers smoked on all 30 days during the past month. This rate for every day smoking is slightly lower than that found among all cigarette smokers across the province (77%).

The average number of cigarettes per day among daily teen smokers is highest in the 15 to 19 year age group (11.4) compared to those aged 12 to 14 (7.1). Similar to all daily smokers throughout the province, males smoke more per day than females (12.5 vs. 9.5). The amount smoked per day on smoking days for non-daily teen smokers is similar to the provincial average for all non-daily smokers (3.2 vs. 3.5).

The base survey found a number of relationships between cigarette smoking and demographic characteristics, including age, place of birth, income adequacy, and ethnic background. These relationships, between cigarette smoking and demographic characteristics, are consistent with the overall provincial results.

Cigarette smoking builds from 6% among those 12 to 14 to 25% among those 15 to 18 to 31% for those 19 to 24 – the highest proportion of any age group – and then decreases with age. Former smoking on the other hand continues to grow with age from 1% among those 12 to 14 to 49% among those 65 or older.

Teens born outside Canada are less likely to be current smokers than those born inside Canada (13% vs. 21%).

High rates of cigarette smoking are evident among teens with an Aboriginal background (39%) while low rates are evident among teens with a South Asian or South East Asian background (14% and 13% respectively).

Teens with low income adequacy are more likely to be smokers than those with a high income adequacy (34% vs. 19%).

A segmentation analysis was performed on all respondents to the advanced questionnaire. This analysis sorts respondents into groups that share common attitudes and beliefs based on their attitudes towards tobacco, motivations for smoking, personal values and self-images. Five segments emerged from this analysis: Activist Anti-smokers, Aging Abstainers, Adamant Smokers, Industrious Individualists and Sociable Experimenters. Teens are most closely associated with the Sociable Experimenters.

This group has a higher than average concentration of smokers, but their age distribution is markedly skewed to the youngest end of the distribution. Nearly half of them are under age 24. Almost half of all teens (43%) are in the Sociable Experimenter segment. Not surprisingly, they have a very distinctive psychographic profile which emphasizes experimentation rather than convention. For the moment, they are more devoted to an active social life and appear to accept smoking as just another lifestyle choice. As a young segment, their attitudes toward smoking are somewhat contradictory, just as their psychographic profile shows a mixture of anticipation and fatalism. They show some appreciation of smoking hazards, which might suggest good potential for future conversion to former smoker status. However, their attitudes on a number of key policy issues tend to have more in common with the Adamant Smokers than any other segment.

Focus group participants were most tightly linked to the Sociable Experimenters segment and possessed or exhibited the demographic, behavioural and attitudinal characteristics described above.

This represents a hard core smoking segment – the majority of this group consists of current smokers, and their attitude profile shows the least acknowledgment of smoking hazards or sympathy for smoking control measures. They represent an older segment whose attitudes about smoking have more in common with those of earlier decades when smoking was viewed as a socially acceptable and harmless activity. Only 7% of all teens are in this segment.

This is a young to middle aged group with above average education levels and upper middle incomes. Only 14% of all teens are in this group. They have a fair share of smokers in their midst, despite being in agreement with many of the hazards. While they are not apologists for smoking, they show little sympathy for some of the more activist smoking policies and have little suspicion about the motives of the tobacco industry.

This group is older and more constrained in their economic prospects than the other groups. One in five teens are in this group. They have few current smokers in their midst and acknowledge all of the hazards of smoking and support smoking control initiatives. But they are not likely to be vocal supporters of any cause, given their limited resources and their low sense of personal efficacy and power.

This group represents the outspoken elite that would support any virtually any antismoking initiative. They are middle aged and older, highly educated and concentrated in the upper middle and upper income adequacy ranges. Only 16% of all teens are in this group. They are the most convinced of the hazards of smoking and most suspicious of tobacco companies. While this group has very few current smokers, it has a large proportion of former smokers as well as lifetime abstainers.