STUDY LINKS PRENATAL SMOKING TO OFFSPRING'S CRIMINAL ACTIONS

CHICAGO -- Male children born to women who smoke during pregnancy run a
risk of criminal behavior that lasts well into adulthood, perhaps because
of central nervous system damage, according to a study published yesterday.
The finding was consistent with earlier studies that linked prenatal
smoking by women not only to lawbreaking by their offspring but to
impulsive behavior and attention-deficit problems, researchers at Emory
University in Atlanta said.

But they said their study, based on a look at the arrest histories up to
age 34 of 4,169 men born between 1958 and 1961 in Copenhagen, Denmark, was
the first to show that the impact lasted beyond adolescence into adulthood.

The study said the mechanism be hind the effect might be damage done by
smoking to the central nervous system of the fetus. Lead researcher
Patricia Brennan said the effect uncovered in the study persisted even
after accounting for such factors as socioeconomic status, parental
psychiatric problems, age and the father's criminal history.

In the study, women were surveyed during the final trimester of pregnancy
about how many cigarettes they smoked daily. The arrest records of their
sons were checked by reviewing police records 34 years after the women gave
birth.

"Our results support the hypothesis that maternal smoking during pregnancy
is related to increased rates of crime in adult offspring," said the study,
published in the March issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry, an
American Medical Association publication.

"This general finding is consistent with the literature linking behavior
problems, conduct disorder and adolescent offending to prenatal maternal
smoking," it added. "Our study extended these findings by showing that
maternal smoking is related to persistent offending rather than to
adolescent-limited of fending."

"Compared with males whose mothers did not smoke during the third
trimester, males whose mothers smoked more than 20 cigarettes [ a day ]
during the third trimester were . . . 1.6 times as likely to be arrested
for nonviolent crime . . . 2.0 times as likely to be arrested for violent
crime and . . . 1.8 times as likely to be life-course persistent
offenders," the researchers found.

The study said the findings were in "strong agreement" with a 1992 study in
Finland that followed 5,996 men for a shorter period of time.

"The fact that similar results were obtained from independent birth cohorts
from two differing ethnic national populations suggests that these findings
may [ apply ] to other populations," it said.

Brennan wrote that although the area needed further research, "our results
. . . suggest an additional critical reason to support public health
efforts aimed at improving maternal health behaviors during pregnancy."