No Smoking Area

Are your children smoking? Teach them of the dangers of smoking and help them to quit!

Back in the 60s, before we were all aware of the terrible consequences of smoking, it was considered cool among teens to smoke. Billboards and magazine ads made that guy in the cowboy hat famous. He smoked by the campfire and was even depicted on his horse with a cigarette. Another famous brand emblazoned the pack with a camel with a desert backdrop. I never did get that. Did the cigarettes taste as bad as a camel smells? Or did the illustration mean to convey an exotic experience?

In any case, despite the increases in lung cancer, emphysema and a host of other health problems that ensue as a result of puffing on the tobacco, many kids today still consider smoking to be cool. As a parent, if you think that children smoking is uncommon, or that surely your kids aren't smoking, think again.

If you're still smoking, it's twice as likely that your kids will take up the habit than if you are a non-smoker. Even if you've never smoked, making it clear to your children that smoking is a 'bad' habit that you most certainly frown upon, don't make the mistake of simply assuming that they are listening. The problem of children smoking is still alive and well. In fact, kids are starting to smoke at an even younger age than ever. This includes grade schoolers!

As in back in the day, peer pressure is one of the major contributors to children smoking. Kids want to feel that they are a member of the cooler crowd in their peer group. If the more popular kids in school smoke, due to their own desire to be avant garde, other kids may equate this different behavior with increasing their own popularity.

The concept of the 'forbidden pleasure' is another major reason for children smoking. Sometimes, parents harp so much on the virtues of not smoking, the kids begin thinking you 'protesteth too much' and that it must be one of those forbidden pleasure of which you wish to deprive them.

Here are some ideas on how to drive home the point that children smoking is a really bad idea.

1.Do a Google image search on 'lung cancer' and 'emphysema' for some graphic displays that aren't pretty. Print some of the more graphic images and paste them on the frig. Kids visit the frig frequently, so this not quite subliminal messaging is going to make an impression.

2.Do a Google text search on 'cigarette additives'. This will pull up many results of pages which list the 500-1000 chemical additives contained in cigarettes. Print one of these lists out as well. Give the kids a home assignment to research the effects of some of these. As they say, it's enough to gag a maggot. Let them know that the FDA has approved the addition of these substances and ask them why they think these are considered acceptable for consumption. Now that's a tough assignment and an excellent argument against children smoking – or anyone for that matter.

3.Let them continue to run with this exercise. Ask them to research medical or health sites to find out why smoking is bad for your health and include the variety of health hazards one can suffer as a result. This exercise won't take long. Have them print out a few pages and highlight what they find most disturbing.

If your child has already taken up the habit, lecturing and punishing is not the answer. This only serves to alienate them. Be calm. Sit down and have a chat. If you are a non-smoker, don't take the 'holier than thou' approach. Guide them through the above three steps, sans lecture, threats, anger, or punishment. Offer to pay for the nicotine patches. Go online and find quit smoking forums and support groups they can participate in as an aid to quit smoking. Get an empty mayo jar, fill it about a third full of water and tell them every cigarette must be disposed of in this jar. After just a few days, they can view and smell the gross results for themselves. Each of these strategies may well convince them of the unattractive and dangerous consequences of children smoking.

If you smoke, you're not setting a good example. In this scenario, you've got to walk the talk with them. Let them know you will quit if they do. Due to the fact that it's likely you've smoked for many years, you'll have the tougher time. Be sure they understand that's the truth.

Keep all the frig pics up during the entire quitting process. Insist that your child look them over before opening the frig.

There's no reason to allow another generation of children smoking end up with severe health problems, a degradation of their quality of life and a shortened lifespan.

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By now, everyone on the planet is aware of the dangers of cigarette smoking. Nevertheless, more than 3000 kids start the habit every day! Fighting the battle against cigarettes has long been a case of the tobacco industry versus common sense. However, at the same time, since common sense does not prevail, our Congress continues to attempt to legislate behavior (rather ineffectually) while the tobacco industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars fighting the legislation.

Early in 2009, legislation was passed which almost doubled the price of tobacco. This legislation went into effect April 1, 2009. Perhaps the rationale was that, if tobacco products became so costly, particularly in a bad economy, people would simply not be able to afford to poison themselves – or, at least, not as liberally. The trouble with this enforced type of behavior modification is that cigarette smoking is addictive. Attempts at quitting result in short tempers. Do they really suppose the person who has just been laid off is going to quit smoking while trying to land a new job? Not likely. Chances are they'll reduce their food budget before quitting cigarettes.









The positive result of such legislation? Government coffers grow. While these taxes are supposedly funding new programs to help reduce cigarette smoking and fund even more legislation to ban smoking in public places, we've all seen the efficacy of other such government efforts.

The government's latest move to put a damper on cigarette smoking has empowered the FDA with the authority to approve what ingredients may be allowed in tobacco products, mandate changes, eliminate toxins and disallow new tobacco products. Now, on the face of it, this may sound like a good thing. Nicotine is a toxin and the primary addictive substance in tobacco.

However, what's less known is that there are between 500 and 1000 'additives' to cigarette tobacco which are also addictive and also toxins. Shouldn't the legislation have put some real teeth into this FDA authority, requiring all of the additives be removed, thus approving a much less addictive product that people might actually be able to beat?

When I was much younger and commensurately naive, I thought that the FDA was supposed to regulate food and drugs in a manner that provided the consumer with safe products. Now I know that pharmaceutical companies put out drugs that, while passing FDA approval, are later found to have side effects with devastating consequences which go unnoticed for years. The FDA allows additives, growth hormones and antibiotics to enter our bodies through various approved foods. So why should we believe the FDA will do any better with cigarette 'safety'?

Taxation and attempts to legislate behavior seem more an issue of revenue and politics than real solutions to the cigarette smoking problem. Perhaps if the funding were used for classroom coursework for kids, with documentaries of patients on oxygen tanks and a few images of what cigarette smoking does to your lungs, the money might be well spent.

After all, if President Obama, an educated and intelligent man, still smokes, it seems that it's the future generation we should be targeting. In his remarks on the bill, President Obama said “... For over a decade, leaders of both parties have fought to prevent tobacco companies from marketing their products to children and provide the public with the information they need to understand what a dangerous habit this is.”

When this latest piece of legislation passed, the primary author of the bill, Representative Henry Waxman (D-California) made this statement: "I think we are today at the last gasp of the tobacco industry's efforts to protect their profits at the expense of the health and lives of the American people and to get children to take up this habit." The last gasp.