Towards an Effective Smoking Prevention Programme

The Minnesota Smoking Prevention Programme involves a series of studies begun in 1977. These studies have been aimed at improving techniques for the measurement of smoking among adolescents and developing and refining techniques which can be used for the prevention of smoking. This paper reviews primarily the prevention studies, that have been conducted in whole school rather than in isolated classes or small groups. Two major programmes tested have focused on different components of the learner’s ‘personal influences system’ and indicate that the ‘peer led, short-term influences curriculum’ appears to be more effective than the standard curriculum for pre-test non-smokers, under the Minnesota conditions.