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March 8, 2012
After steep declines, youth smoking is leveling off, report says
After years of steady progress, declines in cigarette smoking among young Americans have slowed, and smokeless tobacco use rates have plateaued, though there are upticks in some groups, a new surgeon general’s report says today.
This 31st surgeon’s report on smoking and the second one targeting youth and tobacco — the first was in 1994 — says that the damage to the heart and lungs begins early in young people who smoke, resulting in deaths an average of 13 years sooner than their non-smoking peers. The lung damage is permanent, reduces lung capacity and increases the risk of asthma and other lung diseases later in life, the report says.
“While we have known the risks of smoking for a long time, this report clearly shows that the damage starts much quicker and is much more dangerous than previously reported,” said Terry Pechacek, who supervised production of the report as associate director for science at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Office on Smoking and Health.
Smoking among high school students fell rapidly between 1997 and 2003. Since then, it has fallen more slowly, from 24.4 percent in 2003 to 18.7 percent in 2010, the report says.
“The smoking problem with kids is not solved,” said Cheryl Perry of Austin, senior scientific editor of the report. “The tobacco industry is still using a variety of methods that are appealing and reach kids. We still have a lot more to do.”
Perry, at right, and University of Texas graduate Pechacek brought a strong Austin connection to the report. They were at a news conference in Washington, D.C., this morning with Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin and other federal officials who discussed the report.
“Today, more than 600,000 middle school students and 3 million high school students smoke,” Benjamin said. “We don’t want our children to start something now that they won’t be able to change later in life.”
The report says that every day in the U.S., more than 3,800 youth younger than 18 start smoking. Eighty-eight percent of U.S. smokers started by age 18, and 99 percent of smokers started before they were 26.
One in four high school seniors smoke, as do one in three young adults and one in five adults overall, said Perry, a professor and regional dean of the Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living at the University of Texas School of Public Health Austin Regional Campus, part of UTHealth. She has been researching tobacco use for more than 30 years.
Smokeless tobacco use is increasing among young white males, and cigar smoking among black females appears to be increasing, the report says.
Tobacco kills about 443,000 Americans each year, according to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. The cost, she said, is $96 billion in medical charges and another $97 billion in lost productivity annually.
The report debunks the notion that young smokers weigh less or lose weight from smoking.
It calls for a stronger dose of prevention to produce a smoke-free younger generation. Although the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement in 1998 curtailed youth-oriented advertising for smoking, other efforts should be pursued, Perry said. The report recommends mass media campaigns, community programs, statewide tobacco control programs, price increases for tobacco products and school-based policies aimed at preventing tobacco use.
“Some of what we found is that the leveling off is associated with reductions in state dollars” spent on tobacco control, said Perry, who worked nearly four years on the 920-page report.
States are using their tobacco settlement money for many purposes and spending on tobacco prevention declined 25 percent between 2002 and 2010, Pechacek said. Texas “is among the lowest in the country” in spending per person on tobacco control, he said.
It collected $1.7 billion money in tobacco taxes and other revenues from tobacco programs but spent just $15.2 million on tobacco control, he said.
Updated, 8:30 p.m.: Clarifies that declining percentages for teen smoking refer to all high school students; the one in four figure refers to high school seniors, according to Perry.
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February 22, 2012
Anti-smoking campaign targeting Austin-area students
A marketing firm working with local health officials is recruiting middle- and high-school students to spread the word about the dangers of smoking.
The Austin Tobacco Prevention and Control Coalition has hired SUMA/Orchard Social Marketing to spearhead the Break the Chain tobacco prevention campaign.
“Students these days are becoming more aware of how tobacco companies use marketing tactics to manipulate their target audience—youth—to get them to smoke,” Program Manager Adam Niederpruem said in a statement. “Break the Chain empowers students to choose their own ways to spread the message of tobacco prevention.”
He will use comedy, improv and other methods to build student work groups at 10 or more after-school programs, according to SUMA/Orchard. Some Manor school district students have already been involved in the anti-smoking effort, starting in 2010, and attended the Teen Leadership Summit sponsored by the Texas School Safety Center in Hunt this past weekend.
The rate of smoking among youth between the ages of 12 and 17 was 10.7 percent in 2010, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Young adults ages 18 to 25 had the highest tobacco product use rates at 40.8 percent, the survey says.
The good news is, the rates of smoking in those groups had fallen slightly from 2009 and were down significantly, nearly 5 percentage points for both groups, since 2002, according to the survey.
So far, SUMA/Orchard has recruited 62 students from five different schools, recreation centers and after-school programs to the campaign. It hopes to expand that to 100 by the end of the month.
The student groups meet about twice a month. All of the groups will gather April 20 at the Mexican American Cultural Arts Center and again on May 11. Leaders will be given a chance to go to the statewide summit this summer.
The Austin Tobacco Prevention and Control Coalition, whose mission is a tobacco-free Austin, is a program of the Austin/Travis County Health and Human Services Department.
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April 10, 2009
Quitline has seen big spike in smokers' calls since April 1 price hike
I wasn’t old enough to smoke ‘em, but I can remember when a pack of Marlboro’s cost 30 cents to 35 cents. With the latest federal tax increase on tobacco, one cigarette now costs about that much.
Since the 62-cent tax took effect April 1 (jacking up the price of many brands to more than $6), the American Cancer Society reports that its Quitline has been slammed.
Between March 31 and April 6, the Texas Quitline received 1,883 calls from people asking for help, according to Justine Hall, a spokeswoman for the American Cancer Society, Central Texas. Of those, 544 calls came on April 1, the day the tax took effect.
The 1,883 total compares with 288 calls for the same week in 2008, Hall said.
She couldn’t be happier.
The Quitline is staffed by trained professionals who offer free and confidential counseling to help people quit smoking, said Ashton Guy, a spokeswoman. The phones are answered in Austin, home of the National Cancer Information Center, where callers can be connected with smoking cessation resources in the community, including support groups.
The number is (800) 784-8669. People also can go online to www.cancer.org/GreatAmericans and receive tips for quitting. Many people need a combination of methods to succeed, ranging from counseling to medication.
The American Cancer Society says tobacco use is the single-largest preventable cause of disease and premature death in the United States, accounting for an estimated 443,000 premature deaths, including 38,000 deaths among nonsmokers from second-hand smoke. It says half of smokers will die from smoking-related diseases, such as heart disease and stroke.
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September 22, 2008
Smoking falls below 20 percent for first time
It’s jarring to watch early episodes of the “Twilight Zone” TV series on DVD — not so much because the shows are unsettling but because host Rod Serling is never seen without a cigarette. We forget in this era of smoking regulation how common it was to see people smoking, including doctors.
Even so, I still was struck by recent news brought to my attention by the American Cancer Society. For the first time since Word War I, when cigarettes came into wide use, smoking among U.S. adults has fallen below 20 percent. A report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that in 2007, 19.7 percent of adults 18 and older were smokers (smoked more than 100 cigarettes in their lives and now smoke at least some days). That was below the 2006 estimate of 20.8 percent and much lower than the 1997 rate of 24.7 percent.
Men smoked more than women, and whites smoked more than blacks or Hispanics. Just 12.7 percent of Hispanic adults smoke, according to the data.
“You’re seeing the most significant reductions in tobacco usage in states and communities that have really decided to go after tobacco in a comprehensive way,” said James Gray, government relations director of the American Cancer Society in Texas. “It’s a very simple formula we know works.”
Communities with smoke-free workplaces, including bans in restaurants and other public places, as well as anti-tobacco programs that target young people have seen the biggest reductions, Gray said. Unfortunately, he said, little of the settlement money from a big tobacco lawsuit several years ago is being used to reduce smoking.
More college kids have given up smoking, too, but the numbers have shifted widely in recent years. The American Lung Association reports that one in five college students smokes.
By the way, Serling was only 50 when he died. He suffered several heart attacks, and his heart failed during bypass surgery.
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