Anti-smoking campaigns apparently have little effect on youth (smoking abstinence...) [View All]

[The Straight Story]

Anti-smoking campaigns apparently have little effect on youth


Smoking rates in Alberta among youth are rising above the national average even though the province has spent millions of dollars trying to get people to quit, new figures released by Health Canada suggest.

New data from the 2007 Canadian Tobacco Use Monitoring Survey suggest that the number of young smokers in Alberta has increased: 20.1 per cent of surveyed Albertans between the ages of 15 of 19 said they smoke. The national average for that age range is 15.2 per cent.

In 2006, Alberta's average for 15-to-19-year-olds was also 15.2 per cent, nearly matching the national average. However, the statistical confidence intervals for the 2006 and 2007 figures overlap, meaning the observed jump in the youth smoking rate could derive simply from a statistical anomaly.

"We are definitely concerned about the rate of smoking among young people aged 15 to 19. It should be much lower than the smoking rate of the general population, in my view, and it should not be the same rate as adult smoking," said Les Hagen, executive director of Action on Smoking and Health, an Alberta anti-smoking organization.

The overall smoking rate in Alberta was 20.9 per cent in 2007.

http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2008/09/02/edm-smoking.html

People will continue to have sex, drink, and smoke. Abstinence only on those things won't work :)