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Nonsmoking sections are powerful anti-smoking tactic
Source: (cancerfacts.com)
Tuesday, April 06, 2004
SEATTLE – April 6, 2004 – Actions speak louder than words as far as keeping teens off smoking go, and small actions, such as asking to be seated in non-smoking sections of restaurants can have a profound effect, according to a new study.
The study led by Dr. M. Robyn Andersen of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center found that parents who routinely engage in such anti-smoking behaviors in front of their adolescent children - particularly parents who themselves smoke - appear to significantly reduce their kid's chances of becoming smokers by their senior year in high school.
"I was surprised by the size of the effects," Andersen said. "In particular, I didn't expect them to be so large in the families where there was at least one smoking parent. This was a happy surprise, because most smoking parents don't want their kids to smoke," said Andersen in a prepared statement.
The study, funded by the National Cancer Institute and a gift from the Northern Life Insurance Company of Minneapolis, Minn., is the first of its kind to assess the impact of nonsmoking sections on smoking behavior in adolescents, Andersen said. The results appear in the April issue of The Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
The study findings are based on data collected from more than 3,500 children and parents in 20 school districts in western Washington state. Information on parental-smoking status and anti-smoking behavior was collected from the parents via survey when their children were in the 11th grade. A year later, the 12th-grade students were asked to complete a classroom survey about their current smoking behavior. Student self-reports of smoking activity were found to be largely accurate as verified through saliva tests that checked for the presence of cotinine, a byproduct of nicotine.
Specifically, when parents reported that they did not usually use nonsmoking sections, about 42 percent of their adolescent children became daily smokers. When parents usually asked to sit in nonsmoking sections, the daily smoking rate among their adolescent children was 27 percent. This represents a 13 percent reduction in the rate of becoming smokers by grade 12.
The study also looked at parents' reports of other anti-smoking actions such as banning smoking in the home and asking others not to smoke in their presence, both of which also had a significant impact on preventing daily teen smoking. (Adolescent children of smoking parents who banned smoking in the home were 15 percent less likely to smoke and in homes where the parents asked people not to smoke in their homes the adolescents were 8 percent less likely to smoke.
A substantial percentage of parents in the smoking families reported engaging in such anti-smoking actions: 29 percent reported not allowing smoking in their homes, 35 percent reported usually sitting in nonsmoking sections and 24 percent reported asking others not to smoke around them.
However, the best thing a parent can do to prevent their children from smoking is to refrain from smoking themselves.
"If you as a smoking parent don't want your kid to smoke, ideally you should quit smoking," said Anderson, who is also a clinical assistant professor at the University of Washington. "But even if you can't, or until you do, there are things you can do, such as not allowing smoking in the house or sitting in nonsmoking sections. These actions help you back up your words when you tell your kids you don't want them to smoke, even if you are addicted to cigarettes. It appears to be a way to communicate that this is something that you seriously care about, it's important, and it's not just something you're saying," she said.
The researchers cautioned that 51 percent of the students in the study population were male and 90 percent where white. Since the study sample was almost all Caucasian, reflecting the demographics of the area, the results may not generalize to a multiethnic community.
Previous research indicates that if a child reaches age 18 without becoming a smoker, his or her odds of remaining smoke-free are around 90 percent. Therefore, such simple anti-smoking interventions potentially could prevent thousands of young people in the United States from becoming daily, long-term smokers, Andersen said. Statistics also show that having a parent who smokes increases a child's chances of becoming a smoker by 12th grade by 10 percent compared to children of nonsmoking parents, she said.
Resources for free smoking-cessation assistance include:
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The National Cancer Institute's Smoke Quitline at (877) 44U-QUIT or www.smokefree.gov.
- The Washington State Health Department Tobacco Quitline at (877) 270-STOP or www.quitline.com.
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