Smoking habits among school children in Norway.

Mortality from lung cancer among urban males has in the last 20 years risen 10-fold in Norway. This fact, seen in relation to the connexion between smoking and lung cancer, makes excessive smoking a serious problem. Understanding the difficulty of making an adult habitual smoker stop smoking, the Norwegian Cancer Society has found it necessary to begin preventive work among the young. A Committee on the Smoking Habits of Young People was therefore appointed by the Society in 1956. The committee decided to make a survey of smoking habits among children and teen-agers before embarking on an anti-smoking campaign. The methods used and some of the results of this survey are described in the present paper. A more detailed analysis of the material, especially with respect to motivational factors, is to be published elsewhere (Nilsen). Many surveys have been made in the last few years of smoking habits among groups of adults, but only a few of them specify smoking habits among young people. Kreyberg (1954) used 15-24 years as the lowest age group in his sample from Norway. This is a very wide range, and as the sample consists of seven special groups from the population, it does not provide a representative picture of the smoking habits of Norwegian youth. In other surveys outside Norway the age group 15-19 years has been the lowest represented in the sample, or the respondents have been asked when they began to smoke. Hamtoft and Lindhart (1955, 1956) made a nationwide survey of smoking habits among adults in Denmark, Ossadnik (1954, 1955) in Austria, Haenszel, Shimkin and Miller (1956) in the United States, and Tuyns (1956) in an urban