While parents may believe their influence over their children diminishes over time, in reality, they can still play a significant role in teen choices. A recent study found this to be especially true in terms of tobacco use.

Science Daily recently posted a release covering a study done by the University of Washington’s Social Development Research Group. In this study, researchers found new evidence supporting the theory that parents do play a key role in whether or not teens who experiment with tobacco go on to become daily smokers before they graduate from high school.

“If parents really don’t want their children to smoke they need to communicate that by establishing clear guidelines in their families about not smoking and discuss them with their school-age children.” said Min Jung Kim, a research scientist with the University of Washington’s Social Development Research Group and lead author of the study.

This is great news for parents, of course, but they can have the opposite impact at the same time. In fact, parents can increase their children’s chances of smoking by their own use of tobacco.

“If parents smoke, teens have more access to cigarettes than teens that have non-smoking parents. A second preventive measure for smoking parents is to quit smoking themselves,” said Kim.

In addition to parental influence, other factors that contributed to the likelihood of a teen smoking include having friends who smoke and their involvement in other problem behaviors, such as skipping school, fighting and vandalism.

According to Kim, most smoking prevention programs do not directly address the role of parental smoking or the link between anti-social behavior and smoking, which commonly occur together.