While teens acknowledge the pleasures of smoking, they recognize it as a self destructive behavior. For some, this represents one of its attractions - a way to tempt fate or engage in an antisocial behavior that represents a break with childhood. Despite their own acceptance of the risks of smoking, teens are not so devoted to the habit that they see it as something they would want their own children or younger siblings to emulate. In an association exercise using bands or automobiles to depict smokers versus nonsmokers, the nonsmokers emerged with more positive images than smokers, particularly when the frame of reference was adult smokers. When the reference was teenage smokers, however, the image of a nonsmoker was less favourable than a smoker - smoking teens were seen as more hip or sophisticated.
Smoking thus has a different social meaning depending on whether the referent is adults or teens.
In line with this finding, most teen smokers claimed that they did not expect to still be smoking when they were 30 or 40 years old. Smoking is perceived as okay for young people, but unacceptable for mature adults with family responsibilities who have an obligation to serve as a positive role model. 1.4 Smoking Policy Attitudes, Quitting and Prevention Teens have an intellectual appreciation of the health risks involved with smoking, but there is little emotional identification with the risks because the consequences are associated with older people. Teenagers tend to minimize the risk of their current smoking on the grounds that they have lots of time before they have to worry about any health consequences. Partly because they have assimilated the dangers of smoking, teens are comfortable with the idea of smoking reduction policies, subject to a few exceptions.