Efforts to stop teen smoking are paying off

  Article date: 2002/07/31,Many Teens See Through Tobacco Company Ads

Newly-released data reported in the July 17 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said smoking among high school students peaked in the 1990s, and is now declining.

The CDC report shows that the percentage of those in high school who have ever tried tobacco was stable throughout much of the 1990s, then fell from over 70% in 1999 to about 64% in 2001.

The percent of high school students who smoked on one or more days in the 30 days before the survey dropped from 36% in 1997 to about 28% in 2001.

In 1999, about 17% of high school students described themselves as frequent smokers, but that fell to 14% in 2001. Frequent smoking was defined as smoking on 20 of the 30 days before the survey.
Combined Efforts Bringing Success

Those who work to help reduce the devastation caused by tobacco said there are several reasons for the recent declines.

"When the tobacco companies lost the lawsuit that made them pay for the disease tobacco has caused they passed the costs of their legal problems on to smokers, raising the cost of cigarettes out of the reach of many young people," said Ron Todd, director of tobacco control for the American Cancer Society (ACS).

And some states have raised tobacco taxes in recent years, said Todd. More states that haven’t should do so. This will stop tax-skirting smuggling of cigarettes from low-tax to high-tax states and to discourage youth smoking, Todd said.

Some states have used the money they got from the tobacco settlement to expand programs to educate young people on the dangers of tobacco and to prevent their using it, said Todd, and that has helped. Other states haven’t, and unfortunately lost that opportunity, he said.
Teen Groups Make A Difference

Sara Gonzales, of Austin, Texas, a teen ambassador with the Alliance for Tobacco-Free Texas, is another of those making a difference.

Her group uses TV, radio, billboards, posters in schools, and school club involvement to deliver teen-designed messages about tobacco dangers to kids at all age levels in Texas.

She’s found fewer kids in her school smoke than before because they are getting such youth-friendly anti-tobacco messages through the media, and similar messages from their friends. In-depth information on tobacco dangers in school health classes reinforces those messages.

Gonzales found the number of students involved and their different ways of getting the word out is clearly working.

When her group asked a four-year-old on a Texas beach if he knew what the Alliance mascot, a duck, represents, he replied, "Yes, tobacco is fowl," said Gonzales.

"That sort of thing gets them aware before they even get to the age where they might start to think about smoking," she noted.

More youth are starting to take up the fight against tobacco in those and other creative ways, said Trent Weaver, a teen ambassador in the Texas STEP (Statewide Tobacco Education Program) and a member of the ACS National Teen Network.

"They are arming themselves with information, and taking it back to the schools," Weaver said. "They are telling their friends the truth about tobacco and dispelling all the myths about how it’s the cool thing to do and how it makes you look more mature.

"These are kids who are starting to care about their schools and communities. They are fighting what tobacco does there, and it’s making a real difference," said Weaver.

Todd agreed that the multi-pronged attack against tobacco-caused disease is working among teens, and said consistency of effort is crucial.

"If we continue to do these things that clearly work — taxing cigarettes substantially, if more states use the money from the settlement wisely, and if caring members of the public continue their successful efforts, we might have a real chance to sustain this very important, life-saving downward trend in youth smoking," said Todd.

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