Two Recent Reports Provide Information to Promote Tobacco-free Schools
Both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Office of the Surgeon General at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently released reports about tobacco that are relevant to smoking and tobacco education and school policies.
The CDC report, Cigarette Use Among High School Students, published in the July 7, 2006 edition of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), analyzes the smoking data from the national Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) and examines changes in cigarette use in high school students between 1991 and 2005. From 1999 to 2003, an analysis of three behaviors shows that: the number of students who had ever tried a cigarette (lifetime cigarette use) dropped from 70.4% to 58.4%, who smoked a cigarette on more than one day in the last month (current use) dropped from 34.8% to 21.9%, and who smoked on 20 or more days in the last month (current frequent use) dropped form 16.8% to 9.7%. However, the findings in this report indicate that the significant downward trend in prevalence in current smoking in high school students that occurred from the late 1990s to 2003 has stalled, since there were no changes in these behaviors between 2003 and 2005.
The authors contend that in order to meet the national health objective for 2010 of reducing the prevalence of current cigarette use among high school students to less than 16%, the rapid decline in current smoking seen in the late 1990s and early 2000s must continue. Some factors they suggest may have contributed to the lack of significant decline include: less funding for comprehensive statewide tobacco use prevention programs; increases in the amount of money the tobacco industry is spending on advertising and promotion in the United States; and potentially less exposure to anti-smoking campaigns. In addition, they recommend evidence-based strategies to increase the rate of decline, such as effective media campaigns, comprehensive school-based tobacco-use prevention policies and programs that coordinate efforts with community programs, and increased prices for cigarettes.
The Surgeon General released The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke: A Report of the Surgeon General on June 27, 2006. This comprehensive scientific report concludes that there is no level of secondhand smoke exposure that is risk free and that even brief exposure to secondhand smoke can be harmful, providing evidence that all levels of exposure to secondhand smoke can increase the chances of developing heart disease and lung cancer in nonsmokers. And, because their bodies are developing, infants and young children are especially vulnerable to the effects of secondhand smoke, which is a known cause of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), respiratory problems, ear infections, and asthma attacks. Additionally, exposure can cause respiratory symptoms, including cough, phlegm, wheezing, and breathlessness, among school-aged children. Based on levels of cotinine (the form nicotine takes after being metabolized that is used as a biological marker of secondhand smoke exposure), an estimated 22 million children aged 3 – 11 years (almost 60%) and 18 million youth aged 12 – 19 years were exposed to secondhand smoke in the United States in 2000. Furthermore, on average, children are exposed to more secondhand smoke than adults. Children aged 3–11 have cotinine levels more than twice as high as nonsmoking adults.
This report also contends that separating smokers from nonsmokers, cleaning the air and ventilating buildings cannot eliminate exposures of nonsmokers to secondhand smoke. According to Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona in the press release of the report, “Smoke-free environments are the only approach that protects nonsmokers from the dangers of secondhand smoke”.
For more information on MMWR, please contact:
Sherry Everett Jones
Sce2@cdc.gov
770-488-6185
For more information on the Surgeon General’s Report, please contact:
The HHS Press office
202-690-6343
Sources: MMWR and HHS