As a parent of six children and a non-traditional graduate student, adolescent smoking is something I have had to deal with at least six times. The Federal Interagency Forum offered no answers but did recommend more study. Applying Festinger's theory, a greater amount of resources dedicated to preventing teen smoking should have led to a greater decrease in teen smoking, but that does not seem to be the case. In fact, the opposite seems to have occurred. This led me to ask whether the addictiveness of nicotine might have some influence on why a theory like Festinger's, so well grounded in other areas, did not seem to work here.
Teenagers use tobacco.
That is an established fact. What is up for contention is why do teenagers use tobacco, in spite of all the propaganda cultural pressure aimed at telling them not to. Many court cases have been fought on this issue but there is still little current information due to the mutability of the subject matter, children. Another example is Iodine. Iodine is a poison but it is also a necessary nutrient.