Facilitating Adolescent Smoking: Who Provides the Cigarettes?

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Abstract
Purpose.: Most adolescent smokers obtain cigarettes through social sources. We examine the extent to which cigarettes are provided by facilitators of legal age to purchase cigarettes. Design.: Analyses of data from the 1999 California Tobacco Survey, a large population-based, random-digit–dialed telephone survey, are reported. Setting.: California. Subjects.: Data were from a subset of 1239 adolescent (12–17 years) respondents who reported ever having smoked a cigarette. The response rate for all adolescents selected for interview was 75.5%. Measures.: We describe cigarette providers to adolescents in social (cigarettes given to the adolescent) and economic (someone else buys cigarettes for the adolescent) transactions by the reported facilitator's age. Results.: Of the 82.2% ± 2.6% of adolescents who had ever smoked who usually obtained cigarettes from others, 21.6% ± 2.5% used economic transactions; most (60.6% ± 3.4%) were given cigarettes. The majority (73.3% ± 3.6%) of those relying on social sources were given cigarettes by someone <18 years of age; very few were given cigarettes by someone 21+ years old. Most (90.4% ± 2.0%) usually given cigarettes reported friends as facilitators. Of those who relied on economic transactions, 56.1% ± 6.6% reported facilitators who were 18- to 20-year-olds, another 24.7% ±6.3% had suppliers ≥21 years of age. Altogether, 80.8% ± 5.8% of facilitators in economic transactions were ≥18 years of age. Conclusions.: Until peer approval of smoking and sharing cigarettes and adult facilitation of adolescent smoking is reduced, it will be difficult to significantly reduce adolescents' access to cigarettes.