Objective: To determine associations between younger youths’ susceptibility to smoking and four household variables related to tobacco socialization: parental and sibling smoking, restrictions on smoking in the home and exposure to smoking in vehicles.

Methods: A secondary analysis of the 2004/05 Canadian Youth Smoking Survey used logistic regression to investigate the relationships between youth susceptibility to smoking, gender, and four household variables related to tobacco socialization. Susceptibility to smoking was operationalized by three levels of smoking experience and intention: non-susceptible non-smoker, susceptible non-smoker and experimenter/smoker. The national survey included 29 243 grade 5 to 9 students from randomly sampled public and private schools in ten provinces.

Results: For non-smokers, the odds of being susceptible to smoking increased with having a sibling who smokes, a lack of a total household smoking ban and riding in a vehicle with a smoker in the previous week, when adjusting for all other variables in the model. These variables also increased the odds of being an experimenter/smoker versus a susceptible non-smoker. Parent smoking status was not significant in these models.

Conclusion: Denormalization messages, through enforced home and vehicle smoking bans, appear to support youth in maintaining a resolve to not smoke, regardless of parental smoking status.