From the advanced survey we discovered that teens have the same level of agreement as the general population that the connection between smoking and cancer has been proven beyond any doubt (77% for teens and 79% for all residents). Despite this widespread agreement, there are still some teens who are skeptical saying that the government would ban it if it was really bad for you or believing that it isn’t bad for because of its widespread use.

"Everybody does it. They have these ads on TV with people dying and holes in their throats. I see people doing it all the time and they are fine. It can’t be THAT bad for you."

In the focus groups we generally found that teens were aware of the health risks of smoking when they tried it; they knew it was bad for them but this was also part of the attraction. In hindsight, they now realize that they didn’t fully grasp the severity of the health problems associated with smoking and feel this is something that should be better communicated to children.

Despite believing that smoking causes cancer, cancer acts as a deterrent to smoking only for some teen smokers. Some don’t think that they will get cancer. Others said that you are going to die anyway, so why not from smoking. Even for those teen smokers who have had a someone close to them go through the cancer process and eventual death, the effects have been short-lived. One teen smoker had a close friend whose father died of lung cancer and that friend kept smoking despite the father’s death. This teen smoker remarked that she would have quit smoking if it was her father who died. Of course, this begs the question "how close does the brush with cancer and death have to be?" And the answer is – extremely close. This is illustrated by another story told by a female teen smoker whose grandmother died of lung cancer after going through a long illness. The grandmother’s death had a profound effect on the teen and caused her to quit smoking around the time of her grandmother’s death. However, she found the funeral so stressful that she began smoking again and decided that she could accept the fact that she might die of lung cancer like her grandmother.

Teens are less concerned with the health effects of secondhand smoke (67% for teens and 72% for all residents). In fact, a few teen smokers were skeptical of the harmful effects of secondhand smoke. Attitudes and behaviours surrounding secondhand smoke are discussed in more detail later in this report.