New strategies for combatting teenage smokers

Health Minister John Rahael recently announced that teenagers in Trinidad and Tobago smoke cigarettes at a higher rate than other Caribbean youths. The findings were taken from a 2002 Global Youth Survey, which showed that 40 percent of 13- to 15-year-olds in this country had experimented with tobacco. This figure is actually not as bad as it seems. Research has shown that only one-third of teens who experiment with tobacco go on to become regular smokers. Still, if the survey is accurate, that still means that 13 percent of the populace will be regular smokers in about ten years. It also means that, 30 to 40 years after that, a significant percentage of that group will be suffering or dying from avoidable health problems like lung cancer, heart disease, strokes and so on.

Mr Rahael noted that the Government had attempted to reduce tobacco smoking through public awareness programmes, limiting the sale of cigarettes to minors, and getting the tobacco companies to stop advertising in the print or electronic media. Nonetheless, cigarette smoking has not declined. The Health Minister blamed this on “lax regulatory mechanisms” and the tobacco industry’s strategy of targetting young people. Mr Rahael is partly correct. The strategies he outlined have been tried in many different societies, and failed in all of them whether the mechanisms were lax or not. But it is true that teenagers smoke because it is seen as a “cool” thing to do, and tobacco advertisements reinforce that stereotype. However, the Health Ministry is hardly likely to reduce tobacco use among teens by using more of the same old strategies.

In coming up with a more effective approach, the first question to be asked is this: Why do young people start smoking? There are three main reasons. First, the habit is contagious; second, cool kids smoke; and, third, teenagers always want to fit in. In fact, the strongest predictor of whether a youth will smoke is whether his friends are doing it. This is another reason why public awareness campaigns aimed at teenagers can backfire. It really is no use telling teenagers about the dangers of smoking. The typical teenager is not going to worry about a disease which may hit them 30 to 40 years on — after all, by that time, you’re so old that you might as well die, anyway.

Moreover, such warnings from adults can actually make smoking more attractive to teenagers. Precisely because it is dangerous, and because adults disapprove of it, and because regulations prevent them buying cigarettes easily, smoking becomes more than a habit — it becomes a way to signal rebellion. And no teenager worthy of the label is not rebellious in some way. So any public campaign must find some way to portray smoking as not cool. But other strategies can work as well. Raising the price of cigarettes helps make them unaffordable to youths.

And research shows that nicotine addiction has a threshold limit — if you stay below the limit, you don’t get addicted, but if you cross it, you do. That limit is between four to six milligrammes within a 24-hour period (or about five cigarettes a day). So getting the tobacco companies to reduce the nicotine levels in their product could be effective in preventing tobacco addiction and the consequent diseases. If the Government is serious about reducing cigarette smoking,  then it must come up with new and innovative ways to tackle this crucial health threat. More of the same is bound to fail.