Where there’s smoke, there’s more smoke: The social settings and friendship interactions that encourage young adults to smoke cigarettes

Abstract

Despite widespread public health campaigns in Western countries people continue to smoke cigarettes and more worryingly, young people continue to take up the habit. In this thesis it is argued that cigarette smoking practices for young adults can be understood in terms of contributing to their sense of identity construction through friendship interactions and sociability. Data collected from email administered surveys and snowball sampling techniques, alongside secondary data from the National Drug Strategy Household Survey (2007), inform the research undertaken in this thesis and the results support the social benefits hypothesis in explaining why young adults smoke cigarettes. This study thereby suggests that in order for anti-smoking initiatives to be more successful in tackling the smoking habits of young adults additional research is required in identity formation, interactive factors and sociability factors that affect cigarette smoking practices of young adults.