problem behaviors tend to be at higher risk not only for later alcohol abuse/dependence, nicotine dependence, unwanted pregnancy, abortion, and sexually transmitted diseases but also for later illicit drug abuse and antisocial characteristics, potentially leading them to consider and/or to attempt suicide.10,11,14,17,20 This finding is consistent with previous studies among U.S. high school students12,13 reporting that preteen alcohol use (i.e., before age 13), compared to abstinence during this period, was significantly associated with both suicidal ideation and suicide attempts, and that initiation of alcohol use during the teen years showed a similar but less significant association with suicide and suicidal behavior. Cho et al.9 also found a significant association between cigarette smoking and suicidal ideation among adolescent males and females in the U.S., but did not find a relationship between early alcohol drinking and suicidal ideation and suicide attempts in either gender. Differences between these data and our results may be attributable to differences between the studies in terms of the measures employed; in particular, early onset of alcohol drinking and cigarette smoking in the former study (e.g., the grade in which a young person first got drunk and started smoking regularly) tended to be more conservative than those in
