U.S. investigators found that young people who tend to light up more often in social situations than when they are alone are less likely to try to quit smoking, according to the results of a new study published in the journal Pediatrics.

Although social smoking may seem less worrisome than smoking all of the time, experts are concerned that these smokers are at risk of eventually becoming regular, addicted smokers, a study author told AMN Health.

“If all these social smokers turn into regular smokers, we’re going to have a big problem,” Dr. Nancy A. Rigotti of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston said.

Rigotti added that banning smoking from college campuses, including dormitories, could help protect many college students from graduating with an addiction to smoking. “Social smoking is something I think people are doing more and more,” she said. “Making it less visible is better for everybody.”

To establish the role social smoking plays in young adulthood, Rigotti and her colleagues surveyed 10,904 college students at 119 U.S. colleges in 2001.

Students who said they smoked more when they were with other people than when they were alone were considered to be social smokers. Current smokers included anyone who said they smoked in the past 30 days.

Social smokers were less likely than other smokers to smoke everyday, were less frequently addicted to nicotine, and tended mostly to smoke when they were drinking alcohol.

Rigotti explained that one reason social smokers may be less inclined to quit is because they believe that they are not really smokers, and therefore don’t have a problem.

In another study in the same issue of Pediatrics, researchers from the University of California, San Francisco found that teenagers tend to believe that smoking “light” cigarettes can protect them from smoking-related ills, and that it is easier to quit smoking light cigarettes than regular cigarettes.

However, there is no evidence that light cigarettes cause fewer health problems or are less addictive than regular brands, the authors note.

Given the variety of light and ultra-light cigarettes available, teens may mistakenly believe there is a “progression of safety levels to choose from,” they add. This “illusion of control over health outcomes” may encourage some teens to underestimate the risks of smoking and become addicted.

SOURCE: Pediatrics, October 2004.