A recent study, which followed 270 teenagers who had become occasional smokers before high school, found that 58 percent made it a daily habit by 12th grade. According to the study published in the journal Pediatrics, the likelihood of that happening depended partly of friends and parents.
When friends or parents smoked, teens were more likely to become daily smokers. However, when their parents displayed a “positive family management style”- monitoring monitoring their comings and goings, doling out reasonable punishments and rewarding good behavior, teens were less likely to become habitual smokers.
Teens whose parents kept tabs on them and were non-smokers themselves had a 31 percent chance of becoming daily smokers. The odds were 71 percent among teenagers with parents who smoked and were more lax in managing their kids behavior.
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