Life Style Changes and Risk Behavior among Czech Teenagers

The democratization of the society and economic freedom was one of the most important steps for the Czech Republic. Nevertheless, it had some negative consequences. The objective of the paper is to report the development of risk behaviour during the transformational period, based on data from the ESPAD study. We focus mainly on the issue of availability of the alcohol, cigarettes and illicit drugs to Czech teenagers. Responses from the survey show that an easy access to alcohol, cigarettes and illicit drugs for the majority of students tends to be a norm. This is, however, to a certain extent enabled by the context and life style of their parents and the whole population which is relatively tolerant to risk behaviour.