Background: Children s exposure to hazardous chemicals, including legal drugs, is greater than that of adults in the same environment and children are more vulnerable to their health consequences. Program “Non Smoking is a Norm” allows the prospective observation of the development of attitudes to the legal drugs, their consumption and influencing factors among the cohort of school children from their age 6 years. The publication describes the smoking and alcohol drinking among these children when they attended 3rd and 4th classes of public schools. Methods: Nine-years-old children were asked to say, if they ever tasted some alcoholic beverages and smoked and in which occasion. One year later, the question about the alcohol consumption was limited within the last month period and differenced one or repeated smoking. Some data reported by children were compared with those obtained by parents. The differences between consumers of legal drugs and those who never used them were evaluated by t-test in the EPI INFO statistical program. Results: In the 3rd class, about 70 % of children have tasted alcohol. In 4th class, more than 40 % of children drunk alcohol last month, boys significantly more often. Beer is the most favorable drink. Among those who tasted alcohol, almost half of pupils at the 3rd class drunk repeatedly different beverages; at 4th c1ass more than one quarter of pupils drunk repeatedly during the last month. More than 90 % of children obtained the alcoholic beverage from the adult family members or other relatives. Another 5 % of children took alcohol from the available domestic sources. Friend as a donor of alcohol was mentioned only in some cases. In contrary, only less than 54 % of parents admitted their child could taste some alcohol and 4 % of parents declared their control on child s drinking. About 28 % of ten-years-old children experimented with smoking, 80 % of them obtained cigarettes within their family. Conclusion: The tolerable family environment supports and facilitates the availability of legal drugs for young school children. To search the way how to change it is very difficult, but absolutely necessary.

Key words: parents – schoolchildren – alcohol – smoking