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让青少年远离香烟
 
 

  Teens will quit smoking to save others

  Teens and young adults—those folks who take the car without asking and pretend not to hear when you ask the m to turn down the music—apparently are more likely to stop smoking if they think their smoke could harm those around them.

  "The kids were more concerned about the harmful eff ects of secondhand smoke than they were concerned about themselves," says Stanton Glantz, a professor of medici ne at the University of California, San Francisco, and lead author of a telephone survey of 600 teenagers on s moking.

  The belief that secondhand smoke harmed people arou nd them more than doubled the chances that the young sm okers were planning to stop their habit in 30 days or a lready had quit, the survey says.

  However, the same wasn't true when the young people were asked whether they were worried about their own he alth risks because of smoking. Glantz says the response s were not statistically significant as an indicator th at concern would lead them to quit smoking.

  The researchers surveyed 300 smokers and 300 non-sm okers between 14 and 22 years of age.

  Previous studies have found that the ill effects of secondhand smoke are enough to prompt adult smokers to quit or at least consider it,but Glantz says this is th e first proof that teens also are affected by these con cerns.

  "Like adults, kids are concerned about the effects of smoking on others," he says. "One of the big mistake s that anti-smoking people have made is that they've tr eated kids differently from adults."

  The tobacco companies treat kids like adults, and t hat's part of the allure, Glantz xays. Those trying to get kids to stop smoking should do the same, he says.

  Approximately 4 million teenagers smoke, according to the American Heart Association, and more that 3000 t eens under the age of 18 become daily smokers every day . If current trends continue, about 5 million of those teens eventually will die of some disease attributable to smoking, the association estimates.

  Previous studies of how antitobacco advertising aff ects people have shown that worry about secondhand smok e, information about the addictive qualities of tobacco and reports about the tobacco industry's dishonest beha vior are the three most highly effective messages that influence people to stop smoking, Glantz says.

  "People who design tobacco control programs for tee ns should be putting more emphasis on clean indoor air and secondhand smoke and less on things like youth acce ss to cigarettes," he says.

  by Janice Billingsley

 
 

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