Religion as a protective factor against adolescent smoking habits: evidence from Spain

Abstract

Background: There are a wide number of assessments suggesting that being a member of a religious community inhibits adolescents’ risky behaviours and, consequently, can act as a protective factor against the consumption of smoking substances.
 Methods: We have analysed a structured questionnaire answered by 1935 adolescents from Tarragona (Spain).
 Results: We have found that variables linked to family were the principal explanatory factors of adolescents’ smoking habits. Living with two parents was a protective factor against tobacco and cannabis use since its Incidence Rate Ratio (IRR) was clearly below 1 (p<0.01). So, whereas living with one parent showed an IRR>1 (p<0.05), adolescents that live without parents presented an IRR close 2 (p<0.05 for tobacco and p<0.01 for cannabis). However, having a religious confession also influence smoking substance use in adolescents (IRR close 0.85 with p<0.01).
 Conclusion: We found a clear preventive effect in belonging to a religious community. Moreover, this protective effect was less intense, but not statistically significant, for Catholics than for members of other confessions.

Explaining Cannabis Use by Adolescents in Tarragona (Spain): Correlational and Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analyses

“…The fact that being male is a significant risk factor of cannabis use is in accordance with mainstream findings in literature [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. The significant and negative relation of MONITOR with USE is widely supported by literature [4,5,[9][10][11][19][20][21][22][23], that found similar results for the influence of parental monitoring on drug consumption. Analogous conclusion it is extracted from OLR finding on the impact of RELIGION over USE and reviewed literature [4,5,7,8,10,11,15,16,20,21,24,25,29,[31][32][33].…”

“…Nasim et al [32] reported that religion has a dissuasive effect on the risk behaviors of adolescents, interfering with their use of drugs by helping them to internalize messages that discourage consumption. The significant protective effect of religiosity in cannabis smoking has been reported in samples from diverse cultures [4,5,7,8,10,11,15,16,20,21,24,25,29,[31][32][33].…”

“…Gender and age have been usually reported. So, being male is usually outlined as an enabler to drug consumption [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. Likewise, the probability of using cannabis increases with adolescents' age [5,8,14,[17][18][19][20].…”

“…Adolescents' family environment often embeds several factors linked with substance consumption. Greater parental monitoring and support are related with a smaller probability of cannabis smoking [4,5,[9][10][11][19][20][21][22][23]. Parental tolerance to substance use or parents' habitual consumption positively impacts on adolescent drug use [5,9,13,14,18,19,21,22].…”

The significance of information variables in polydrug use by adolescents: insights from a cross-sectional study in Tarragona (Spain)

“…However, the latter assertion depends on the culture of the society being analysed; the more similar the gender roles are, the fewer differences in substance use tend to be ( McHugh et al, 2018 ). In some cases, women may even consume more tobacco than males, as shown in studies by Eisenberg et al (2014) and Andres-Sanchez, Belzunegui-Eraso & Fernández-Aliseda (2021) . On the other hand, men may have greater engagement with cannabis ( Francis et al, 2019 ; Andres-Sanchez & Belzunegui-Eraso, 2022 ), tend more toward polydrug use ( Brière et al, 2011 ) and are more likely to develop disorders associated with such practices ( McHugh et al, 2018 ).…”