Facts About Kid Smoking

Around 700 million children (about half the children living) inhale air polluted by tobacco smoke, especially at home, The World Health Organization (WHO) said.

Accept this bribe. Kids as young as 10 get £15 shopping vouchers to quit smoking by the NHS (UK).

“Taking it to the Streets” and “National Kick Butts Day,” a day for kids to quit smoking, started by the Washington, DC-based Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids (March 25).

Students were shown images of blackened lungs to get them to see what cigarettes really are. One school celebrated National No Smoking Day by visiting Gunther von Hagens' Body Worlds exhibition in London to view a real lung damaged by years of cigarette smoke.

Peer pressure can prevent teen smoking; resulting in students being 25% less likely to smoke, according to a review of the Assist (A Stop Smoking in Schools Trial) program in Cardiff, Wales by Cardiff University and the University of Bristol researchers. The results were published in The Lancet.

"Smoking is cool," Indian (India) 6th graders say. This illustrates the perils of westernization. A rise in cigarette ads and tobacco marketing is being linked to urban Indian children's (age 11+) increased smoking rate, according to a new study conducted by University of Texas' School of Public Health researchers published in the American Journal of Health Behaviour.

500,000,000 Asian youth are at risk from tobacco addiction, that's half a billion people (WHO).

200,000 children between 11-15 years old regularly smoke, according to English government estimates.

Fat chance girls! Did you know that grls who smoke more than double their chance of becoming obese adults? This according to a Finnish study published in the American Journal of Public Health.

34,000 elementary students from all 50 states wrote President Obama about clean air, world peace and help for the poor and homeless. Lower taxes and a more security in shopping malls was mentioned too. And their final wish was: Mr. President, "You should stop smoking!"

Single-handedly , an asthmatic 15-year-old Japanese boy convinced the Shizuoka City (Japan) city council in Japan to ban smoking in public.

Nearly 400,000 kids start smoking due to the influence of movies every year. One way to curtail this may be to slap a "R" rating on all movies that depict smoking. A featured topic at a meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics held Oct. 7-10 in Atlanta.

Nearly 25 percent of young smokers tried their first cigarette before they were 10 years old.

Watching TV can make kids smoke. Children with TVs were twice as likely to become smokers, according to several studies and surveys.

The American Academy of Pediatrics now calls for the elimination of smoking from movies accessible to children and young people.

The British Medical Association wants to protect children by having smoking in films and TV recieve a higher classification and carry anti-smoking adverts as well.

Smoking is in 75 percent of hit movies, according to a report by the National Cancer Institute.

For new movies: Smoking scenes in movies are now a factor when determining a film's rating. Smoking may make a PG-13 movie R-rated, according to the Motion Picture Association of America.

Watching R-rated movies leads kids to believe it's easy to get a cigarette according to researchers who reviewed the second Development and Assessment of Nicotine Dependence in Youth, a 2002 to 2006 study of 1246 Massachusetts 6th graders (American Journal of Preventive Medicine).

Some DVD movies that have people smoking will also have anti-smoking video messages on them placed the. Film industry veterans Bob and Harvey Weinstein were the first to respond to the latest request by 41 US states, Puerto Rico, Washington DC and 2 US territories to help curb teen smoking.

Walt Disney is the first Hollywood studio to ban cigarette smoking in its films (July 25, 2007).

The tobacco industry spent upwards of $13 billion on smoking-related advertising and promotion in 2005. This together with scenes showing smoking in movies causes teenagers to start smoking, according to a report by the National Cancer Institute.

Media exposure of children linked to increased tobacco use and obesity, according to the Media and Child and Adolescent Health: A Systematic Review study by the Yale University School of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, and California Pacific Medical Center. It was published by Common Sense Media. The study's lead researcher was Ezekiel Emanuel of the National Institutes of Health, whose brother, Rahm Emanuel, is chief of staff to president-elect Barack Obama.

South Africa now bans smoking in a private dwelling used for commercial childcare, tutoring or schooling, and in any car carrying a child who is younger than 12 (more on smoking bans).

In an attempt to stop youth smoking, sweet and fruity "flavour" additives in tobacco products will be banned by the New South Wales Government beginning mid-January 2008.

Kids who date before their teens are at least twice as likely as other youngsters to become smokers. "They are between six and nine times more likely to begin smoking in their teenage years," Robert West, a professor of health psychology at University College London in the UK, said (journal Addiction).

US 8th-grade students smoking rate is down to 3 percent from 4 percent in 2006 and 10.4 percent in 1996. Marijuana, alcohol and other illegal drug use is down too, according to the 2007 Monitoring the Future survey by the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA).

66 to 68 percent of Chinese youth that tried tobacco products smoked their first whole cigarette before they were 13 years old, a 15 percent increase from 1998, according to a Health Ministry report.

Tobacco companies manipulate menthol, an tobacco additive that adds a mint flavor to cigarettes, levels in cigarettes to hook young smokers, according to researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Kids who believe cigarettes as easily accessible are more likely to end up as regular smokers. Having friends who smoke makes it worse, according to a report published in the current issue of Annals of Family Medicine funded by the Substance Abuse Policy Research Program (SAPRP) of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Kids 7 to 12 years old at 24 elementary schools in Seoul, South Korea are included this year in the city government education office's annual anti-smoking program.

US teen smoking stalls at just under 22 percent for 14 to 18 year old students from 2003 and 2007, the CDC says.

50 percent of students said they had ever tried smoking a cigarette in 2007. That's down from 70 percent in 1999.

Wisconsin’s statewide anti-tobacco movement for youth, FACT (Fighting Against Corporate Tobacco), is meeting with state legislators to help the state ban smoking. The James Williams Middle School student reps also discussed second-hand smoke (The Rhinelander Daily News).

In Bahrain, more than 3,000 people under 18 years old were caught smoking mostly in shopping malls during the month of October 2008. 17 women and 662 men were also caught smoking duing the 173 surprise inspections carried out.

Around 200 schools throughout Somerset county (UK) have joined the initiative to persuade students who have started smoking to end the deadly habit.

More than 25 percent of all Trinidad and Tobago national secondary schools students surveyed tried cigarette smoking at least one, according to a study administered by the National Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention Programme (NADAPP), in collaboration with the Inter American Drug Abuse Control Commission.

"Nine out of ten smokers start when they are children" chief executive Tony Thirlwell, New South Wales (Australia), said.

Learn about teenage smoking and older youth smoking.

Ever wonder how smoking and drinking affects young smokers?

"Please don't be a fool like me, don't keep smoking, try and give it up. And if you are young and haven't started, don't start," Tasmanian Premier Jim Bacon told Tasmania's youth as he resigned his post after being diagnosed 10 days earlier with an inoperable lung tumor.

An average of 6,200 underage smokers have been caught smoking every year in the last 5 years (Health Sciences Authority [HSA]).

"One half of the world's children, are exposed to second-hand tobacco smoke," South African deputy health minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge said as she ushered in a bill that further bans smoking (MPs).

Drop it like it's hot. Indiana middle school students smoked at a rate of 4.1 percent in 2008 vs 9.8 percent in 2000.

$40+ billion underage smoking lawsuit. Nigeria is suing 3 international tobacco companies, British American Tobacco, Philip Morris and International Tobacco Ltd. The $40 billion lawsuit accuses the companies of promoting underage smoking. The lawsuit also seeks to stop tobacco sales near schools and everywhere people under 18 years gather.

Youth smoking sucks. Pay attention to these kid smoking facts and stop smoking now.

Phone, email and in person smoking cessation support is available to help you quit. And don't forget about Smoke-Free, the book.

7 questions to quit smoking.

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