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New ways of taking on teen smoking
November 7, 1996
Web posted at: 9:50 p.m. ESTFrom Correspondent Rhonda Rowland
ATLANTA (CNN) -- By choosing to smoke, many American teen- agers are choosing how they will die.
That's the conclusion of a study issued Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control -- one third of high school students smoke, and 4 million American children will end up dying a painful and early death as a result.
It's a grim statistic -- every day, 2,000 teen-agers start smoking. The trick is to stop smokers when they're young, before they get hooked.
"When we think of smoking, we tend to think of adults and older adults dying of lung cancer or emphysema. What we miss is the fact that they're dying as adults because of decisions they made as a child," said Michael Ericksen, of the CDC's Office on Smoking & Health.
That casts considerable doubt on the effectiveness of health care messages delivered in schools.
"Children are really unaffected by long-term health outcomes," said Ericksen. "All they care about is the present. They care about how they look, how attractive they are to others, and they also don't like to be exploited."
Some good news, though
The state of Massachusetts has caught on to this. Officials there have devised an ad campaign that taps into teen image consciousness and wariness of manipulation.
And that's not all. In the early 1990s, Massachusetts voters approved a 25-cent cigarette tax hike. California did the same thing.
"What both of those states have done is they've increased the tax on cigarettes and used a portion of those funds to pay for very aggressive media campaigns to educate the public, particularly children," Ericksen said.
It seems to be working. In Massachusetts and California, smokers are quitting at a rate double that of the other 48 states.
But health officials said that's still not enough to keep teens from smoking. They say what's needed is what President Clinton has proposed: limiting access to cigarettes and limiting the appeal of advertising.
Special sections:
CNN Interactive's extended coverage
- Tobacco under attack - August 1996
Related stories:
- President declares nicotine addictive - August 23, 1996
- Kids, not adults, the focus for cutting tobacco use - August 22, 1996
Related sites:
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- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration
- Tobacco Control Archives from the University of California, San Francisco
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