PHA-Exchange> Campaign cuts number of teenage smokers - The Independent

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Campaign cuts number of teenage smokers - The Independent
By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor
Monday, 24 February 2003

The number of teenagers in Guernsey who smoke has been cut by half after 
one of the most successful anti-tobacco campaigns in more than a decade.
Radical measures to curb tobacco use, introduced to the Channel Island in 
the late 1990s, have brought a big change in the way smoking is perceived 
by young people, with a sharp decline in the number saying they were 
attracted to it.
Campaigners say the measures could be introduced on the mainland with 
similar success. "Guernsey has led the way in reducing smoking among young 
people," the charity Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) said.
In 1997, the island banned all tobacco advertising, restricted smoking in 
public places, raised the age limit for buying cigarettes from 16 to 18 and 
imposed a sharp increase in the tax on cigarettes of 8.5 per cent a year 
above inflation.
The extra tax was used to fund a £500,000-a-year schools programme to cut 
smoking among teenagers called Gasp (Guernsey Adolescent non-Smoking 
Project). Those who already smoked were offered nicotine replacement therapy.
A survey of 11, 13 and 15 year-olds on the island conducted in 2002 by the 
Schools Health Education Unit at Exeter University found the number who 
said they had smoked at least one cigarette in the previous week was half 
that recorded in 1997. The survey also found that the proportion of 
teenagers in Guernsey who smoked was half that seen in a similar survey of 
British young people carried out by Exeter University.
Clive Bates, director of ASH, said: "There are certain principles such as 
increasing tax and banning advertising which we know work in every society 
and they have been particularly well applied in Guernsey." Although 
cigarettes were cheaper in Guernsey, it was rising prices that deterred 
people rather than their absolute level, he said.
Alun Williams, chairman of the Gasp programme, said: "We are really excited 
about these results. We have taken a risk by being at the forefront of 
smoking reduction initiatives and we have seen now that the risk has paid off."
The programme employed two full-time workers – one of them a former athlete 
who had had lung surgery for a smoking-related condition – whose task was 
to challenge smoking's image as sophisticated and cool. Their lessons 
played on a mixture of fun and fear by pointing out that smokers were less 
kissable, less athletic and smellier than non-smokers.
The strategy appears to have worked with children on the island now 
referring to smokers as "outcasts" who have to puff away in doorways to 
satisfy their craving.
Mr Bates said although Guernsey's achievement was impressive there was more 
that could be done. "They have still not gone as far as Ireland which is 
introducing smoke-free bars from January 2004. That is an amazingly bold 
and inspired move," he said.
Figures for 2001, the latest available, show the level of smoking among 
15-year-olds in England has come down only slightly from 24 per cent in 
1998 to 22 per cent.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health/story.jsp?story=381088

FWD: Syed Mahbubul Alam

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