Pressures Affecting Teenage Health Behavior

This paper deals with pressures that affect adolescent health behavior. Because my own interest and work has involved adolescent cigarette smoking, and to a lesser degree alcohol use, much of this paper is based on these experiences. Focusing a paper on teenage pressures on past experiences with cigarette smoking is entirely appropriate. In the last twenty years there has been a concerted effort to better understand adolescent cigarette smoking, a concerted effort to reduce the rate of adolescent cigarette smoking, and the most recent data suggest that we are beginning to succeed in this endeavor. By request this is not an exhaustive discussion of teenage pressures, nor is it an extensive review of the literature; rather, it is an attempt to highlight important issues for planning health education activities and to stimulate thought and discussion on an important topic.