Anti-smoking campaigns apparently have little effect on youth (smoking abstinence...)

[The Straight Story]

Anti-smoking campaigns apparently have little effect on youth


Smoking rates in Alberta among youth are rising above the national average even though the province has spent millions of dollars trying to get people to quit, new figures released by Health Canada suggest.

New data from the 2007 Canadian Tobacco Use Monitoring Survey suggest that the number of young smokers in Alberta has increased: 20.1 per cent of surveyed Albertans between the ages of 15 of 19 said they smoke. The national average for that age range is 15.2 per cent.

In 2006, Alberta's average for 15-to-19-year-olds was also 15.2 per cent, nearly matching the national average. However, the statistical confidence intervals for the 2006 and 2007 figures overlap, meaning the observed jump in the youth smoking rate could derive simply from a statistical anomaly.

"We are definitely concerned about the rate of smoking among young people aged 15 to 19. It should be much lower than the smoking rate of the general population, in my view, and it should not be the same rate as adult smoking," said Les Hagen, executive director of Action on Smoking and Health, an Alberta anti-smoking organization.

The overall smoking rate in Alberta was 20.9 per cent in 2007.

http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2008/09/02/edm-smoking.html

People will continue to have sex, drink, and smoke. Abstinence only on those things won't work :)

[texastoast]

1. It's okay to raise consciousness

But nothing works with youth like peer pressure. It depends on the friends kids hang out with.

[The Straight Story]

2. I thought it depended on the parents

;)

Good v. bad peer pressure - now that is a topic in and of itself.

[progressivebydesign]

3. Parents and the media are the influencers...

If you smoke, then you can expect your child to smoke. If they don't.. you got lucky.

The media glamorizes smoking, 24/7, and they think some anti-smoking campaign is going to make a difference? Frankly, I see these young women in their 20s lighting up, and they're dressed up in expensive clothes, makeup, hair, and I want to show them a pic of women who are in their 40s who have smoked, the pics of women in their 40s who have not. It's nooot a pretty sight. Smoking makes you ugly eventually, if it doesn't make you dead. That's the message that would resonate, the way they have been trying to educate sunbathers with cameras that show sun damage. They should show what their pretty faces will look like in 20 years.. that'd do it. They think they're invincible, so death or cancer doesn't phaze them now.. but their looks should.

[texastoast]

4. How about you?

Did you try to please the movie makers, your parents, or your friends when you were a teenager?

[SheilaT]

5. I have a sister

who is 18 months older than I am, and since she's been a smoker since age 13 she looks easily ten years older. Recently I happened to mention how close in age we actually are to my nieces who are in their early twenties, and they were absolutely shocked to learn she's not a whole lot older.

But unfortunately a lot of 20 year olds can't even begin to imagine that they will ever be 40 and so the pictures -- while I think that's absolutely the best idea out there -- will be only of limited help.