MS 14.00-15.30 Main sessions

OBSTACLES TO SMOKING PREVENTION IN SOUTHERN EUROPEAN SCHOOLS: SUGGESTIONS FOR PRIORITY INTERVENTIONS

The smoking epidemic affects a high proportion of adolescents in southern European countries. At the end of the eighties those countries in the European Union around the Mediterranean, together with Portugal, stood out within the Community because of the high proportion of their young people aged between 15 and 24 who were smokers, according to data from studies carried out by the European Commission. Specifically, with a community average of 39% of boys who smoked, the proportion in Greece was 53%, 52% in Portugal and 51% in France and Spain; only Italy had a percentage of young smokers lower than the average for the Community: 31%. In terms of girls (34% of whom were smokers at this time in the European Union), Spain headed the table, with an astounding 49%, followed by France (46%); the other three countries in the south of the European Community (Portugal, Italy and Greece) revealed proportions of girls who smoked similar to or lower than the European average.

An adequate approach to the prevention of smoking among school-children may contribute decisively to discouraging or delaying starting to use this drug, to encouraging those who already smoke to give up as soon as possible, to promoting understanding of smoking as a problem (its size, consequences, beginnings, solutions), to fostering an active attitude towards the problem in young people and to keeping school free from the smoking pollution.

Its is relatively easy to distinguish which are the factors the introduction of health education in schools depends on in any country: teacher motivation, training and advice, an appropriate legal framework, institutional support for the health education, methodological guidelines and didactic tools to facilitate its practice, exchange of experience in this area, social support for teachers when carrying out activities of this nature and, in the measure in which it is really necessary, financial backing. For this education to be of quality depends, in turn, essentially on the training of teachers, their own evaluation procedures and the support provided by research projects in this field, if they are relevant and well carried out.

A policy of support for health promotion in schools (or smoking prevention among school-children) which whishes to be effective must consider all the aforementioned factors simultaneously and give priority to those measures of greatest impact, with a view to changing the present situation, bearing in mind the day-to-day obstacles which interfere with teachers assuming this preventive function. It is precisely this aspect which is developed in greater detail in this paper, taking into account the special characteristics of those countries in the south of Europe.

Smoke Free Europe Conference Abstracts - 19 SEP 1996

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