HELP FOR PARENTS

How Parents Can Protect Their Kids
From Becoming Addicted Smokers
Part I of a 4 Part Series

The vast majority of parents do not want their kids to smoke, for obvious reasons. Smoking causes a wide range of serious health problems —including lung cancer, heart disease, and strokes—and frequently results in premature disability and death. To make matters worse, kids can start becoming seriously addicted to smoking very quickly, just weeks or even days after first "experimenting" with cigarettes.

1 What's more, smoking can harm kids well before they reach adulthood by causing a number of immediate, sometimes irreversible, health risks and problems.

2 Right now, more than a quarter of all high school students smoke, while experimentation can start as early as fourth grade.

3 Each day, more than 4,000 kids try their first cigarette; and each day another 2,000 kids, under 18 years of age, become new regular, daily smokers.

4 That is more than 730,000 new underage daily smokers each year - and roughly one-third of them will eventually die prematurely from smoking-caused disease.

5 Fortunately, parents can take a number of effective actions to protect their kids from starting to smoke or becoming another one of the tobacco industry's addicted customers and victims. Being good parents and role models is important, but it takes much more to prevent kids from smoking. Parents must also work against pro-smoking influences outside the home, including efforts to ensure that schools are doing their best to prevent and reduce youth smoking and to reduce cigarette-company marketing that reaches and influences kids. The U.S. cigarette companies spend more than $30.7 million per day marketing their products, and they rely on youth smokers to replace their adult customers who quit or die.

6 As one cigarette company executive put it, “the base of our business is the high school student.”

To be continued...

National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids, November 10, 2003
Meg Gollogly