Advocacy Campaigns to Reduce Tobacco Use in Youth - Research Paper in Public Health

Use of tobacco inflicts vast public health and financial burden on countries. Tobacco is one of the leading causes of impulsive deaths that are preventable. Until the use of tobacco is over, more youths will be addicted to its use, more deaths will be experienced, and many families will be devastated by the losses associated with the use of tobacco. The fact is the use of tobacco will not end minus focusing on youths. Research shows that nearly 100% of the adults who smoke started smoking tobacco when they were young people (US Department of Health, 2014). Hence, to curb the dead rising from tobacco use, prevention is important, and this can be done by focusing on the youth to stop them from initiation into the use of tobacco. The tobacco industry enhances the usage of tobacco among the youths. The tobacco business spends a lot of money to market its products, which lies about $10billion annually. Children movies show scenes where people smoke tobacco, images and the message passed across in magazines normalize the use of tobacco. This has led to many youths to start smoking tobacco with the majority continuing smoking up to adulthood.

Advocacy campaigns

Many strategies have been employed to help counter the effects that inspire youths to start using tobacco. There are various strategies used that include media campaigns, widespread community programs, wide-ranging nationwide tobacco regulation programs, increase in the price of tobacco and school-centered policies. These advocacy campaigns have shown success in preventing the start and use of tobacco among the youths.

Tobacco Excise Taxes

As an advocacy campaign, the tax levied on tobacco not only generates revenue to the government but also it creates an economic deterrent towards the use of tobacco products, especially by the youth. Theoretically, intensification in the taxation of tobacco and its products will result in a surge in the price of tobacco hence decrease in the youth consumption of tobacco. The latest campaign for tobacco-free children approximates that increase in the price of a pack of cigarette by 61-cents causes a 9.2% decrease in smoking among young people. They further argue that 1.9 children who are living today will no indulge in smoking and 1.2 millions of both the youth and adults who are already smoking will stop (Jha, & Peto, 2014). This can be achieved through three major mechanisms that include aiding as an inducer to stop smoking, helping in reducing the number of cigarettes smoked, and preventing others from starting to smoke. This has been seen as an effective strategy to stop smoking amongst youths. This is because youths are highly priced sensitive hence higher prices because of high taxes levied on tobacco is preventive to youth smoking. Researchers carried out on the effect of tobacco excise tax on youth smoking indicate that this is an effective strategy for reducing smoking among the youth.

Tobacco counter-marketing campaigns

Contemporary conclusions indicate that well-funded, sensibly designed, and precisely targeted counter-marketing campaigns may be satisfactory in curbing down tobacco use among youth. In the USA, the tobacco counter-marketing campaigns started in the year 1967. Various studies have been carried out on the effectiveness of this strategy in reducing smoking of tobacco among young people. In the year 1998, Florida started a rigorous campaign against youth smoking called truth. The objective of the campaign was to overcome the impacts of tobacco by using ads showing youths having an opposition towards the tobacco industry. After a period of 1 year, the Florida Youth Tobacco Survey recorded a decline in the smoking of 18% in middle school and 8% among high school students (Singh, 2016). The decline in smoking in youths due to these campaigns can be attributed to various factors that include the revelation of the youths to meaningful messages, and the youths who came across the campaign ads assessed them positively. In addition, youths highly exposed to the ads possess more anti-tobacco opinions and intents hence have control over other influences. Finally, youths that come across those ads have fewer odds of starting smoking.

It is important to broad device strategies aimed at preventing smoking initiation in youths. Increase in price due to increased taxation, and tobacco counter-marketing campaigns have shown effectiveness in a reduction in youth smoking. However, it is clear that we need to modify the existing strategies to curb down initiation of tobacco smoking effectively. This can be done by combining the existing strategies to come up with an effective, comprehensive strategy that will effectively solve the initiation of smoking. This is supported by numerous researchers that show evidence that combination of tobacco control policies is able to reduce initiation and cigarette smoking among the youth. A research carried out in California showed that increase in the price of cigarettes led to a slight decline in tobacco use. However, there was a major decline in smoking when California in addition to increased taxes passed the smoke-free workplace law in the year 1994 (Brown et al., 2014). The aim of combining the strategies is to come up with effective policies that will reduce access of tobacco by the youths, provide knowledge to the youth regarding negative effects of tobacco, reduce advertisements that promote tobacco and finally reduce the availability of tobacco to the youth.

Reference

US Department of Health and Human Services. (2014). The health consequences of smoking-50 years of progress: a report of the surgeon general. Atlanta, GA: US Department of Health and Human Services,Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, National Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, office on smoking and Health,17.

ingh,T. (2016). Tobacco use among middle and High school students-United States, 2011-2015. MMWR. Morbidity and mortality weekly report, 65.

Brown,T., Platt, S., & Amos,A. (2014). Equity impact of interventions and policies to reduce smoking in youth: a systematic review. Tobacco control. Tobacco control-2013.

Singh, T. (2016). Tobacco use among middle and high school students-Unites States,2011-2015. MMWR. Morbidity and Mortality weekly report, 65.

Jha, P., & Peto, R. (2014). Global effects of smoking, of quitting, and of taxing tobacco. New England journal of medicine 370(1), 60-68.