When I saw this article I had my guesses as to what the research would find. My assumption was that adolescents will low levels of trust would end up drinking and smoking, but I based that assumption off of what I know of American students. I wasn't sure with Japan being so different that the environment effects them differently. But, turns out that youth are kind of one in the same. They're all going through the same developmental changes, so they're minds and bodies are going to respond similarly. The fact that youth being in a school environment where they feel people are trust worthy makes them less likely to smoke says a lot about how an adolescent's environment effects them. The article states that it is thought schools characterized by high levels of trust may influence adolescent smoking by promoting rapid diffusion of anti-smoking messages, increasing adoption of anti-smoking norms, and exerting social control over definitions of smoking as deviant behavior. Smoking and drinking behaviors were evaluated from the students’ responses to the following questions: “During the past 30 days, how many days did you smoke cigarettes?” and “During the past 30 days, how many days did you have at least one drink of alcohol?” Generalized trust was assessed by questions such as “Generally speaking, would you say most people can be trusted?”.

     When I think of the kids I went to middle school and high school with who were known for drinking or smoking I know that they were the ones who saw the teachers as adults who were just there to tell us what to do. They saw the teachers only job was to make our lives miserable. Those kids also didn't grow up in the best situations either. They never had an adult figure at home to trust so when they came to school they saw every adult as the same. This study shows that teachers and the school environment play a huge role in the development of adolescents. They can either be stimulated by a positive trustworthy environment, and be positively influenced, or they can be negatively influenced in an untrustworthy environment that will affect their life style negatively.

     As a future educator this is important to know. Alcohol can be detrimental to the development of an adolescent. With the brain development that is happening at that time alcohol will do nothing but harm them. The information in this study is also important because it shows just how influential the school environment is. Kids spend up to 8 hours a day in a school so the people in charge need to be influential and people that the kids can go to for anything. When I'm a teacher I plan to be that person for my students. No child should feel like they're in an unsafe setting, or feel they are alone. This article goes to show that schools should not only be places where students go to improve academically, but also a place where they can go feel like they belong, and can go be themselves and trust that the people around them are there to support them. My goal as an educator is not to just help students improve in the classroom but to also help them improve on skills that will help outside of the classroom; to help with their over all well being.

     We should care that our youth is so negatively influenced by an untrustworthy environment that they use substances to escape from the reality of the situation. Adolescents using at such a young age will be detrimental to their growth and as an educator we should sit there and let that happen.