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Secondhand Smoke May Make Teens More Likely to Stop

By: Ephrat Livni
Source: abcnews.com
Published: December 4, 2001

A new study, led by Dr. Stanton Glantz of the University of California at San Francisco, found teenage smokers were more than twice as likely to quit if they believed secondhand smoke negatively affected others. Knowing how smoking affected their own health was not as effective a deterrent for young smokers, he says.

The results, which are published in the latest issue of the American Academy of Pediatrics' journal Pediatrics, are consistent with earlier findings in surveys of adult smokers, who also are more likely to stop because of its impact on others
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"These results show that teens behave just like grown-ups," says Glantz, a professor of medicine and researcher at the university's Institute for Health Policy Studies. In the past, tobacco-control programs identified clean air as an adult issue, but this study shows it is an equally important element of prevention programs directed at teens, he says.

To assess young people's attitudes toward secondhand smoke, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania contacted 300 smokers and 300 nonsmokers between the ages of 14 and 22 across the United States. They found nonsmokers were more likely to consider smoking risky, and were twice as likely to consider secondhand smoke dangerous, than smokers. Among smoking teens those who considered the habit dangerous to others were more inclined to stop.

Awareness Growing
Secondhand smoke is the third leading cause of preventable death in this country, killing 53,000 nonsmokers in the United States each year, according to a 1991 study in the American Heart Association's journal Circulation. In 1993, the Environmental Protection Agency classified secondhand smoke a Group A carcinogen -- a substance known to cause cancer in humans.

Americans are increasingly concerned about the risks of secondhand smoke. A 1997 Gallup poll found that more than half of American adults feel exposure to secondhand smoke if "very harmful", compared with just 36 percent in 1994.
 
According to Tim Filler, program manager for Berkeley, Calif.-based Americans for Nonsmokers Rights, a national lobbying group that targets secondhand smoke in an effort to ban smoking in public places, local clean indoor air ordinances have increased from 150 in 1985 to 956 today. In the past decade, the dangers of secondhand smoke have received more attention from groups like the EPA and the Centers for Disease Control, Filler says.

Glantz believes education on the harmful effects of secondhand smoke should become a key element of future tobacco-prevention programs targeting teens. The reason the secondhand smoke message may be more effective than knowing personal health risks, he suggests, is that it's harder to rationalize other people at risk.

Mat Meyers, president of the Washington-based Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, agrees, saying the study offers "new and important" information that should be taken into account and included in future mass-media tobacco prevention campaigns.

On a smaller scale, Glantz believes, nonsmoking teens need to speak out more about how they are affected by their peers' smoking. "Encouraging nonsmoking teens -- as well as adults -- to object to breathing secondhand smoke and encouraging creation of smoke-free homes is a productive tobacco control strategy for youth," Glantz concludes in the study.