Restaurants with no-smoking policies aren't just creating a healthier atmosphere for their diners — it turns out that they might be helping to keep teens from becoming regular smokers, too, a new study reveals.
Why? Because kids with infrequent exposure to smoking in public are far less likely to consider the unhealthy habit as common or socially acceptable, as past studies also have suggested.
That's why this group of researchers talked to more than 3,800 12- to 17-year-olds in 301 Massachusetts communities about their smoking habits, then followed up with many of them 2 years later and again 4 years later.
Although having a parent who smokes increased kids' odds of opting to light up in the first place, the local restaurants' no-smoking rules had a much greater impact on whether kids who'd experimented with cigarettes ended up becoming regular smokers. In fact, kids living in areas with strict smoke-free restaurant laws (like total smoking bans) were 40% less apt to make the transition from experimenting to turning smoking into a long-term habit.
And that's no small feat: According to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, 1,000 kids in the United States become regular smokers every day — a choice that will cause a third of them to die too early from smoking-related diseases.
What This Means to You
Many states and towns have restricted or banned smoking in public places because it's bad for everyone’s health. Secondhand smoke is harmful for children and increases the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), asthma, ear infections, bronchitis or pneumonia. Non-smokers exposed to second-hand smoke are also at increased risk of developing cancer and heart disease. If smoking is still allowed in restaurants in your area, find out which ones have no-smoking policies and enjoy your family meals at those establishments instead.
Always insist on smoke-free policies wherever your kids go — school, day care, restaurants, jobs, even relatives' and friends' homes. That's because secondhand smoke contains 250-plus harmful chemicals and more than 50 are carcinogenic (cancer-causing), from arsenic ammonia to hydrogen cyanide. What's worse: Concentrations of many of these chemicals are higher in secondhand smoke than in the smoke inhaled by smokers.
But it's crucial to make your home a no-smoking zone, too. If you smoke and have (or are expecting) a child, quitting is the only way to significantly reduce exposure to hazardous tobacco chemicals.
Parents who continue to smoke — or let anyone else smoke — around their kids are in effect allowing their children to smoke, too. That's because when kids are around someone who's smoking, they're breathing in both the smoke that's being exhaled (called mainstream smoke) and the smoke coming from the end of a burning cigarette, cigar, or pipe (called sidestream smoke).
To help discourage your kids from ever being tempted to take a puff:
- Establish firm rules — and consequences — when it comes to using tobacco.
- Explain that it's against the law for kids to buy tobacco products.
- Emphasize that although occasionally smoking while hanging out may seem like no big deal, people can become hooked within days of a first encounter with the nicotine in tobacco.
- Talk about the long-term health consequences of smoking, including lung problems, cancer, and heart disease.
- Tell them about the immediate consequences of smoking, such as bad breath, shortness of breath, and decreased athletic performance.
But don't wait to talk about the dangers of tobacco until the peer pressure of adolescence kicks in. Start the discussions early on and continue the no-smoking message throughout childhood and well into the teen years.
Reviewed by: Mary L. Gavin, MD
Date reviewed: May 2008
Source: "Local Restaurant Smoking Regulations and the Adolescent Smoking Initiation Process: Results of a Multilevel Contextual Analysis Among Massachusetts Youth," Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, May 2008.
