Attitudes and Risk Perceptions Toward Smoking Among Adolescents Who Modify Cigar Products.

Objective: To examine high school youths' perceptions of health risks, and personal and parental attitudes toward cigarette, cigar, and marijuana use among youth who use or modify cigars.

Participants: The 2013 Cuyahoga County Youth Risk Behavior Survey used a two-stage cluster sample design to randomly sample public high schools and classrooms. Students in selected classrooms were eligible; 16,855 students completed the survey.

Main Outcome Measures: This study examines the association between risk perceptions of and youths' personal and parental attitudes toward smoking cigarettes, cigars, and marijuana with current use of cigars, cigarillos or little cigars (CCLCs) or modified CCLCs (ie, freaking or blunting).

Results: 23.5% of youth reported current use of CCLCs in some way; 11.0% reported current freaking and 18.5% reported current blunt use. CCLC users tended to be male and Black. Perceiving all smoking behaviors as risky, wrong, or wrong by parents reduced odds of using CCLCs. After multivariate analysis, Blacks had increased odds of using CCLCs if they perceived smoking cigarettes as harmful, which was not found among other race/ethnicity categories. Having parents who believed that smoking CCLCs is wrong increased the odds of youth freaking or blunting among all CCLC users. Odds of blunting was greater for those who believed CCLCs were more risky among all CCLC users.

Conclusions: Findings suggest that CCLC users may think cigars are safer than cigarettes, and that modifiers may think their use is safer and more in line with their parents' views than non-modified CCLCs.