What if the older child your family is considering adopting, smokes? Will you allow the child to continue smoking after being placed in your home? Will you insist the child quit smoking or refuse to pursue the adoption?

We had a 15-year-old girl come to live with us and she stayed for nearly two years, even though originally, it was supposed to be for only a few days. We found out the day after she arrived that she was a smoker. Not only are none of our family members smokers, but we have children with asthma, so we’ve never allowed anyone to smoke in our house.

Of course, we insisted that she quit smoking immediately. That resulted in her sneaking off to smoke and lying to us about smoking. This caused numerous conflicts between her and me, and we had bigger battles to fight about. In the end, we told her that we prefer she quit, but until she could, she needed to smoke off from our property. She complied, and dutifully stood in the road down by the cows, whenever she smoked.

When I read about a recent study in the May 2007, Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, linking young smokers to suicide, I wondered if we could have done more to get her to quit. The study found that boys, who smoke regularly by the age of 14, are four times more likely to commit suicide before they reach the age of 34 years, than their peers who don’t smoke.

Females who smoke daily are also four times more likely to attempt suicide than their peers are. However, it didn’t matter at what age the females had begun smoking, according to the study. The researchers considered other factors associated with suicide risk, including psychiatric problems, but those variables did not substantially affect the outcome of their findings.

Cigarette smoking can lower serotonin levels. Reduced amounts of serotonin in the brain can increase episodes of both depression and aggression. Smokers also have higher levels of testosterone, which may be a factor in the smoking-suicide link. Researches felt that further studies were needed to investigate the effects of smoking on the neurobiology of depression, self-damaging aggression, and impulsivity.

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