How to reduce smoking among teenagers

The most important way to stop the pandemic of smoking would be to stop the influx of new smokers i.e. mainly teenagers. When youngsters aged 13–14 yrs try their first cigarette, most of them are not aware of the possible risk they are exposed to. Among young people, the short-term health consequences of smoking include respiratory and nonrespiratory effects, addiction to nicotine, and the associated risk of other drug use. Long-term health consequences of youth smoking is reinforced by the fact that most young people who smoke regularly continue to smoke throughout adulthood 1. In this issue of the Journal, Holmen et al. 2 report their findings from a cross-sectional population study in a county in Norway. The study seems to be well designed and conducted with a high participation rate of >90%. In this group of student teenagers physical activity was inversely associated with smoking and a positive correlation was observed between exercise and lung function in never-smokers. This is in accordance with other studies i.e. in US high schools. Students who play at least one sport are 40% less likely to be regular smokers and 50% less likely to be heavy smokers. Regular and heavy smoking decreases substantially with an increase in the number of sports played 3. The lower rates of smoking for student athletes may be related to a number of factors: 1) greater self-confidence gained from sports participation; 2) additional counselling from coaching staff about smoking; 3) reduced peer influences about smoking; 4) perceptions about reduced sports performance because of smoking; 5) greater awareness about the …