UK: Fears the Number of Young Smokers in Kent Will Rise

Source from:  Your Tunbridge Wells (uk)  01/31/2013

A staggering 13 per cent of Kent's 15-year-olds are smoking regularly – and the problem looks set to get worse.

Despite millions spent on graphic anti-smoking campaigns – and a rise in the legal smoking age from 16 to 18 – schoolchildren in the county are still ignoring the obvious risks and lighting up.

And worryingly, a new report by Kent County Council claims 5,600 more young people will start smoking this year alone, putting their lives in serious danger from cancers, and even death.

The KCC report states smoking remains the biggest cause of premature death, responsible for more loss of life than the next four factors combined, which includes obesity and alcohol, and that 70 per cent of smokers want to give up.

In a bid to tackle the problem, County Hall chiefs are set to launch the Tobacco Control Programme. By the end of 2015, the authority wants to hit government targets of getting the percentage of 15-year-olds smoking down to 12 per cent.

Director of public health at KCC, Meridan Peachey, said: "We have helped a lot of adults stop smoking, but we were finding young people are still starting.

"We need to make more effort to stop them starting in the first place. The statistics are shocking. Where there is smoking in the home there is a bigger chance of them starting.

"Peers make a big difference, and plain packaging will help too. Social media will also help us make smoking unfriendly.

"We need to look at the ethics of the industry if young people are desensitised to the health aspects."

Cutting the numbers of young smokers will be done by raising awareness and education of tobacco issues with the Tobacco Education Quality Standard to Kent schools.

KCC is also developing youth advocacy across Kent for young people to assume control of the tobacco control agenda and develop a "youth voice" and associated campaigns.

Other helpful methods have included sales restrictions and enforcement.

All these aspects will be coordinated with a new Tobacco Control Board for Kent with representatives including those from Kent and district councils, stop smoking services, schools and youth services, Trading Standards, environmental health, police, fire, and Revenue and Customs.

A major element will be to "de-normalise" smoking.

The £655,000 annual cost will come from the Public Health ring-fenced budget – some 40p per head of population.

Figures from a report called Smoking drinking and drug use among young people in England in 2011 from the Information Centre for Health and Social Care, 2012, found the percentage of those aged 15 who smoked regularly in the UK dropped from a 1994 high of 26 per cent to 11 per cent in 2011.

But it's feared the progress is set to be lost with many more taking up the deadly weed.

Anti-smoking charity Ash says children of smoking parents are three times more likely to start. Another report suggests some smoking children go on to alcohol and drug abuse and have a higher mortality rate. Enditem