hen it comes to battling the threat of cigarette smoking empowerment
is a self-conscious step, a decision that entails an act of resistance.[Next] [Previous] [Up] [Top] [Contents] [Index]
Chapter four
hen it comes to battling the threat of cigarette smoking empowerment
is a self-conscious step, a decision that entails an act of resistance.
This is above all true of the situation facing young people in the nicotine-saturated cultures of most countries. Although the conventional wisdom among the public about smoking has changed palpably over the years, the pressures and enticements for young people to smoke remain powerful. It takes a lot for kids to resist smoking, an effort that may have little to do with the simplistic if well-intentioned attempts of adults--in the form of health professionals, teachers and parents--to intervene with facts, figures and horror stories about the tobacco toll.
For many people in their mid and late teens the perspectives and concerns of adults often have little to recommend them, and putting up effective resistance is all part of a wider reach for self-empowerment that often embraces smoking, drinking and taking drugs.
The shifts in perspective needed to place this self-empowerment in terms of shunning smoking or kicking the habit are subtle and remain largely unexplored. Despite this, redoubled efforts are being made by the health education sectors to turn the tide of smoking among young people.
In early 1994 the European Network on Young People and Tobacco (ENYPAT) was created with funds from the EU's Europe Against Cancer programme. Initially managed by Ash Scotland, and guided by a steering committee approved by the EAC, the network aimed to create a database supporting projects devoted to the prevention of tobacco use among young people.
In 1995 the network's first European Conference on Young People and Tobacco was held in Edinburgh. The forum heard a vast array of presentations on campaigns, projects and approaches to prevent children and young adults from smoking, as well as numerous others on surveys and studies of youth smoking. The 1996 Smokefree Europe conference also hosted special sessions on youth and smoking, in particular with discussion fora on tobacco prevention in schools. Again, the focus was on studies, surveys and monitoring.
ENYPAT is now based in Helsinki and continues to act as a point for information exchange to promote activities ensuring what it calls "the development of wider and more coherent programmes involving various member states". This also involves coordinating different projects on tobacco prevention that apply for support from the Europe Against Cancer programme.
A number of the projects being supported by ENYPAT, however, manage to cross over from the surveying and evaluating of trends in youth smoking to interaction with young people. In Italy, for example, the Centre for Health Education has developed a curricular guide for secondary school teachers that has the dual purpose of finding out the opinions and experiences of pupils regarding smoking, together with encouraging them to reflect on the different things that lead to smoking.
Another venture, put together in 1996 by Cancer Leagues from eight member states (Ireland, UK, Greece, Finland, Spain, Portugal, France and Belgium) seeks to set up a health code for young people. Working under the banner of the Youth for Health project, the leagues want the health code to be formulated by young people and thereby have a better chance of being accepted.
The project will involve each Cancer League selecting 10 young people to form national delegations which will then send two members to a youth summit in Brussels where they will draw up an EU health code for young people which would be presented to the President of the European Parliament. The project organisers hope to create broad participation among member states in the health code, and in pursuing the process focus on youth action against smoking.
In a similar vein, a project being developed by Youth Against Tobacco in Britain aims to create anti-smoking lobbying campaigns by young people in three EU member states where tobacco use is high. The project will target advocacy, communication and media skills of young people, as well as youth empowerment for lobbying on measures known to reduce tobacco use among their age groups. It also intends to promote international coordination between youth and an action plan for advocacy aimed at the European Parliament.
Intervention of this nature may smack less of the adult propaganda techniques of the past. But empowerment through prompting young people to think and act for themselves remains tentative territory for the adult world.
According to the World Health Organisation's Tobacco Alert for the 1997 World No-Tobacco Day, "young people can be effective tobacco control advocates." The report explains that many educational projects now seek to engage young people in action both in school and in their communities, and that this often leads to young people becoming involved in tobacco control activities, networking and alliance building. However, the report cautions, such activities should arise from young people's concerns and not from an adult political agenda.
The WHO underscores the success and popularity of the Smokebusters movement, which involves children in action networks as well as in club activities. One Scottish club, the WHO reports, has started a Responsible Retailers Scheme, in which club members help local authorities identify shopkeepers who do not break the law by selling tobacco to minors. The club then offers them an award and local publicity.
Smokebusters clubs were started in various EU countries in 1996 as a result of projects sponsored by the European Commission. Another of these projects aims to develop a "comprehensive European smoking prevention approach for adolescents". Funding for the initiatives, part of a Community campaign to educate EU residents on the dangers of smoking, comes from ECU 5.5 million raised from taxes of tobacco production in member countries.
In the US, high-profile emphasis on organising on the issue of smoking and young people is organised through the up-beat Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, which describes itself as "the largest non-governmental initiative ever launched to protect children from tobacco addiction." The campaign works on a number of fronts: raising public awareness of tobacco as a paediatric disease, mobilising on public policies to limit tobacco marketing and sales, but also involving young people in a range of lively activities.
A culmination of the latter is the nationwide Kick Butts Day, held in 1997 on 10 April. The information, actions and presentation of Kick Butts Day aims to take the view of young people and suggest initiatives that they carry out themselves. "For years the tobacco companies have been telling kids lies about how cool it is to smoke," ran a campaign press release. "They say it'll make you sexy, sophisticated or tough, but they know that what it will really do is make you sick and eventually kill you."
With well-honed write ups and publicity deftly angled to appeal to young people, the adult-run Tobacco-Free Kids campaign is strong on youth empowerment at a certain level and aims to make anti-tobacco campaigning by young teens fun and communicative.
As tobacco companies target kids in an effort to raise new generations of smokers, youth empowerment appears increasingly needed to diminish the vulnerability of young people to becoming pawns in a deadly race for profits. Clearly, years of heavy campaigns by public health lobbies on the effects of smoking have hardly had the desired effect.
In many industrialised countries young people are taking to smoking in higher numbers, though the middle-aged adult populations have never been so health conscious. Finland, a success story in smoking reduction, has witnessed an increase in smoking among young girls. A 1995 WHO study of school children in Sweden has also found rising numbers of 10-13 year olds using tobacco. In the US, federal health researchers reported a few years ago that the aggressive focus on youth in tobacco advertising was linked to the brands young people smoke, and at the end of 1996 Tobacco-Free Kids reported teenage smoking rates at their highest in 16 years. In its 1997 study on Smoking, Drinking and Drug Taking in the European Region the WHO reported that smoking among the young is on the rise in 20 of the region's 32 countries.
It seems that something more than health education meted out by well-meaning professionals is needed to give youth empowerment a further fillip.n