Youth & Young Adults
91% of youth do NOT smoke
With smoking rates on a steady decline, our current youth population can be the generation to end smoking!
According to the WHO’s most recent edition of its report Smoke-free Moves: From Evidence to Action, movies showing the use of tobacco products have enticed millions of young people worldwide to start smoking. This global report reaffirms research done by the Ontario Tobacco Research Unit concluding that in Ontario alone, at least 185,000 children and teens will be recruited to smoking cigarettes from exposure to onscreen smoking. In Ontario, between 2004 and 2013, 57% of top grossing movies featured onscreen smoking, and 86% of movies with tobacco were youth-rated.
“With ever tighter restrictions on tobacco advertising, film remains one of the last channels exposing millions of adolescents to smoking imagery without restrictions,” says Dr. Douglas Bettcher, WHO’s Director for the Department of Prevention of Non-communicable Diseases. Bettcher says taking concrete steps, including rating films with tobacco scenes and displaying tobacco warnings before films with tobacco, can stop children around the world from being introduced to tobacco products and subsequent tobacco-related addiction, disability and death.
For full details on the issue and to advocate for change: www.smokefreemovies.ca
To check out the smoking status of a movie visit: http://tutd.library.ucsf.edu/
“Tobacco is a communicable disease. It’s communicated through advertising, marketing and making smoking appear admirable and glamorous… . It is hard, if not impossible, to find any parallel in history where people have gotten away with such a systematic perpetuation of death and destruction without question or punishment.”(Gro Harlem Brundtland, WHO, 2000)
The Tobacco Industry uses marketing and manipulative tactics to appeal to youth. They are constantly coming up with new products and new ways to make tobacco products look appealing so that they can hook more and more people.
Plain and Standardized Packaging
You’ve probably heard that Austrailia has mandated that tobacco be sold in plain, “drab brown” packs, devoid of all promotional features except the brand name. If you haven’t seen a cigarette pack lately, you may question the rationale for what seems to be a drastic measure. Understand how tobacco companies are exploiting every inch of the pack to recruit and retain smokers and the research evidence in support of plain and standardized tobacco packaging.
“The product itself … is very interesting, because in the cigarette business there is very little to distinguish, particularly in Canada, because we all use the same kind of tobacco….Put it in a package and put a name on it, and then it has a lot of product characteristics.” - Don Brown, Vice-President, Imperial Tobacco Canada, 1989
Experts consider packaging to be one of five key components of successful marketing, along with product, price, place, and promotion. Indeed, the package “may be the biggest medium of communication” with potential customers. This is particularly true of cigarette packs.
- Packaging influences intangible characteristics of product—creates and reinforces brand image
- Packaging influences perception of brand’s tangible sensory characteristics
- Packaging influences perception of type of person that would smoke such a brand
Bad ways to be nice – even though it’s illegal to give or sell cigarettes to anyone under the age of 19, teens continue to smoke. For many, the result is a lifelong addiction that has serious health consequences. To change the number of teens who start smoking tobacco, we need to ensure that sources such as friends, family and strangers do not exist. Young adults aged 19-25 commonly give cigarettes to teens – usually a younger friend or sibling. When we asked ‘why’, most young adults told us it is the easiest thing to do and they are just trying to be nice!
Leave the Pack Behind is a program that offers young adults smoking and quitting information, personalized support, and quitting resources - all for free. It is funded by the government of Ontario. Through this program they offer various opportunities and challenges where smokers can make quit or cut back attempts and non/ex smokers can pledge to remain smoke free.
- 8 weeks of FREE Nicotine Replacement patches and gum shipped directly to you
- Wouldurather… contest is designed to give young adults in Ontario an easy, free way to quit or cut-back on their tobacco use (or just stay tobacco-free!) for the chance to win cash prizes
- QuitRunChill is a FREE web program for smokers and ex-smokers. It’s based on the assumption that almost everyone wants to be a bit healthier.
Clear the air – time to talk about this: Lesbian, gay, bi, and trans (LGBT) communities smoke at much higher rates than the general population. Smoking rates in the general Canadian population have gone down significantly in the last 40 years to about 18%, while research suggests that smoking rates within LGBT communities remain at between 24% and 55%.
But Why? Well, that’s the discussion. Several factors can play into these rates including:
- Stigma, discrimination and oppression
- Social norms in the LGBTQ communities
- Targeted marketing from the tobacco industry
- Access and adequacy of health services for LGBTQ