Smoking is cool again among high school students.
News that the United States has failed to achieve its goal of reducing high school smoking surprises me as there was such confidence a few years ago that we could convince kids of the dangers of tobacco through education efforts.
It’s serious business as a third of smokers who begin in high school will die of a tobacco-related causes. I am dismayed to see teenage girls turn to smoking for weight control.
According to The New York Times:
“People are getting the image that it’s cool to use nicotine as a drug,” Terry F. Pechacek of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in an interview. “We need to bring back our voice, our anti-smoking mass media campaign.”
The popularity of hookah bars and smokeless nicotine products, Mr. Pechacek said, are the modern equivalent of the banned Joe Camel cartoon in their appeal to youths. And some experts worry that the new health campaign against obesity — spearheaded by Michelle Obama from the White House — may be hampering donations to antitobacco campaigns as public health issues shift in emphasis and compete for funds.
Over all, the antismoking countermessage has been lost,” Mr. Pechacek said as the C.D.C. released its biannual survey of more than 10,000 high school students, showing 19.5 percent of them are smokers.
High school smoking rates dipped significantly to 21.9 percent in 2003, from 34.8 percent in 1995, then progress stalled, he said.
One-third of high school smokers are expected to die prematurely of tobacco-related disease, said Mr. Pechacek, the associate director for science in the agency’s Office on Smoking and Health. With about four million students graduating from high school each year, the difference between the current rate and the “Healthy People 2010” goal set by the government 10 years ago amounts to an additional 140,000 student smokers and 46,000 premature deaths for each high school class nationally.
For those of you who work with teens or whose own teens smoke, any ideas on how to combat this? I always think it is sad to visit high schools and see groups of teens huddled after school a block or two from the school lighting up, as if they were waiting all day for that puff.
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56 comments Add your comment
AJinCobb
July 12th, 2010
6:03 pm
@David S,
I’m grateful that my Catholic-school-educated father was so horrified, as a college freshman, by the academic shoddiness of his K-12 education compared with his publicly educated contemporaries, that he insisted on sending his children to public schools. The fanciful criticisms of “government school” opponents are just vicariously embarrassing. Give it a rest.
Ole Guy
July 12th, 2010
11:07 pm
Dave, I would imagine that any 48-hour period within the confines of one of the “better” penal institutions would convince anybody…you, your kids…anybody that the “inconveniences” of regimentation and the imposition of zero tolerance policies in our schools in no way whatsoever mirror life hind’ bars.
In the “good ole days”, gangs were called cliques, violence came in the form of school yard fights in which no one dared to be determined to have any sort of advantage…size, fighting ability, most-certainly no weapons…and drugs, on campus, were generally restricted to perhaps a bottle of booze disguised as a bottle of cough meds. Weekends, of course, were reserved for swipin’ a bottle from the ole man’s liquor locker and, if and when Mary Jane was willing, a little boom boom down by the lake.
Kids were probably no more, or no less screwed up back then than they seem to be today. I believe that is refered to as normal behavior in the confusion of growing up.
The big difference lies in parental willingness to do the job of parents…of parental willingness to teach their kid(s) the meaning of responsibility, consequence, and honor. As far as I’m concerned, those very concepts vaporized from the very fabric of human endeavor many years ago…consequently, the very parents who are expected to pass on these traits themselves probably have little, if any clue.
I don’t know where the answers are…hell, I’m retired; I’ve busted my spheroids getting my little world in order. Earlier efforts at imposing a resurgence of the “ole ways” has been met with all kinds of resistance, from the administrative levels to the “trenches” of reality.
Dave, I know not your station nor your status, but please don’t go stiring up the bees’ nest by comparing life in the public schools to that of prisons. There’s more than enough stupidity to go around.
Ole Guy
July 13th, 2010
12:00 pm
Child of the 60s, I to let a few stogies at those Friday Night beer busts…WHY? For none other then to look cool.
The reasons for discontinueing the smokes were two-fold:
* That wonderful morning-after taste like the entire Chinese Army had marched through your mouth with dirty socks on was so-enhanced by the residue of “terbaccee”.
* An early lesson in economics and personal fiscal policy had me thoroughly convinced that I would much rather spend the money on a few extra beers. That lesson came in the form of my Dad, and my part-time job, refusing me any additional funding.
When I went on active duty, everyone said I would start smoking like a stove…never happened!
richard laughter
August 15th, 2010
6:45 pm
i can see the point of veiw of both sides. i understand some parents of the younger students dont want their kids getting a hold of it but if the student is 18 what does it matter? they are an adult and it is there choice. also high school is a very stressful place with everyone going on about doing something with your life and making good grades. you should just be glad its isnt something worse like crack or meth. to the sirs who wrote this i detect a major biased and you need to cut the crap because thats bad journalism. yu seem to have no regard for the writes of our young americans and your veiws should be thrown into the garbage.
richard laughter
August 15th, 2010
6:49 pm
thought i should include that the last comment was made for the writers of the article not the writer of the topic.
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