Stemming the Tide of Teenage Smoking
by NIH health correspondent Douceur Angevine
Originally published in 2002
Despite the efforts of all levels of Canadian government, young people continue to take up smoking in large numbers. To the young, smoking remains as cool as it has ever been.
Obviously our prevention efforts are failing. Continued increases in the price of cigarettes and in the hideousness of the packages have failed to stem the rising tide of youth smoking. Is there any other approach we can try?
Yes, there is. What health officials seem not to have noticed is that techniques as incompetent as theirs point the way to the competent techniques. In short, if what you are doing now is having the effect opposite to the one you want, then do the opposite of what you're doing now.
In short, if discouraging young people from smoking actually leads to their smoking more, then encourage young people to smoke. Every parent knows that teenagers consider recommendation by an adult to be a sure sign of undesirability. Adult disapproval simply makes the disapproved activity look sophisticated and desirable. By developing a comprehnsive program based on this pronciple we can stamp out smoking.
The schools, of course, will play a crucial role in this initiative. We have seen just this week, in the results of an international study of geographic knowledge, that Canadian students, despite extensive school training in geography, are unable to find pretty well anything on a map. We know that decades of sex education in the schools have had no success whatever in reducing sexually transmitted disease or teenage pregnancy. In fact, the failure of the increasingly graphic health warnings on cigarette packages to influence teenagers is probably due to their inability to read well enough to understand the warnings – the packages probably look like the covers of heavy metal CDs to most teenagers. In other words, the schools have perfected a surefire technique of behavioural change.
The public and high school curriculums must be changed to incorporate extensive smoking training. Students should be required to smoke in class, and smoking homework should be assigned. Students' smoking ability should be evaluated and marks in smoking should be treated as the equals of marks in any other subject.
One of the first things we can expect to happen as a result of this strategy is the development of theories of the teaching of smoking. Faculties of education will train teachers in how to apply these theories, and evaluation of teachers' performance will be based on how well they apply the theories. Like all educational theories, though, theories of smoking will be applied without evaluation of their effectiveness. Children will be taught how to smoke by people using methods pretty well guaranteed not to work.
Parents, you can do your part, too. As frequently as possible mention in front of your kids how cool and hip you consider smoking to be. Whenever they leave the house, make a point of checking to see that they've got their smokes with them. Tell them how many fewer smokes you want to see in their packs by the time they return.
In only a few years we should see a sea change in adolescent behaviour. Provincial testing programs will anounce, to great public shock, the failure of contemporary students to smoke up to minimum standards. Universities will bewail the poor quality of smoking among the incoming first-year class. Employers will lament the difficulty of finding adequate smokers among graduates.
And nobody will be smoking. And that's what we want.
Stemming the Tide of Teenage Smoking © John FitzGerald, 2002
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