Tobacco Expert Reveals No. 1 Tip to Prevent Teen Cigarette Smoking

Visual cues play an important part toward initiating teen cigarette smoking. So much so, that anti-smoking activists have fought for legislation to remove smoking related visual cues from cigarette packaging, TV programming and movies. Ironically, the anti-smoking movement uses visual cues as well, but recent research shows that such ads may do more harm than good. The following article shows what one study on teen smoking has revealed; and, a tobacco expert’s advice to parents with a No. 1 tip to prevent your teen from smoking cigarettes.

A past focus of teen cigarette smoking prevention was to provide teens with explicit messages about the health risks associated with smoking. However, explicit messages are not working effectively. A recent study shows that teens tend to light up a cigarette more often when in the presence of another teen or just by seeing visual images of other teens smoking.

In the online scientific journals Nicotine and Tobacco Research, and Drug and Alcohol Dependence, researcher Zeena Harakeh released her findings regarding what she believes encourages young smokers to light up a cigarette. She found that within the age group of 16 to 24, young smokers tend to light up a cigarette when in the presence of another smoking youth. Furthermore, that the motivation to smoke a cigarette is stronger in the presence of a smoking peer than if the young person were just simply offered a cigarette.

According to a press release from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, Ms. Harakeh—a social scientist from Utrecht University, states that, “I call this implicit, passive influencing, as it happens without the other person actively offering a cigarette,” she explains, while adding that young people who communicate with a peer online and see this person smoking, will smoke more themselves. “So the effect is there, even when they do not smell the cigarette scent of the other,” she says.

One of her recommendations is that anti-smoking campaigns no longer show images of young people as part of the visual cues against smoking. “Merely the image of a young smoker might well cause another young person to light up a cigarette,” says Ms. Harakeh.