Causation can never be proven beyond question. The strongest evidence for causality comes from controlled experiments in which individuals are randomly assigned either to a group that will receive exposure to the causal agent—in this case, cigarette advertising—or to one or more control groups that are not exposed to the causal agent, but are identical to the exposure group in every other way. ...

BACKGROUND While smoking prevalence in Korean men has been decreasing, it is increasing in Korean women. Little is known about women's smoking inequalities in Korea. This study was conducted to investigate the association of socioeconomic indicators with the initiation and cessation of smoking among Korean women. METHODS This was a cross-sectional study on 9,089 women aged 25-64 years from th...

BACKGROUND Previous studies have reported an association between cigarette advertising and smoking behavior. Although this has been reported extensively in the West, it has been reported less in Southeast Asian countries that have not completely banned tobacco advertising promotion and sponsorship (TAPS). Indonesia is the only ASEAN country that has not ratified the Framework Convention on Toba...

BACKGROUND AIM To estimate the impact of smoking restrictions in homes and schools, and tobacco advertising and information on smoking initiation by young people in Ukraine. METHODS Data of 609 young people aged 15-29 was taken from the national representative survey conducted in June 2005. OUTCOME MEASURES The reported age of cigarette initiation was used to characterize the start of sm...

The evaluation of efforts to prevent tobacco use among adolescents requires accurate surveillance of both smoking prevalence and smoking initiation rates. Although several surveillance systems provide timely data about adolescent smoking prevalence (1), data characterizing rates of smoking initiation among adolescents have been limited. To improve characterization of trends in smoking initiatio...