Kentucky's Youth and Teen Smoking

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At a local Kentucky convenience store you can buy a pack of Marlboro cigarettes for about $4.50. For the same price as a cheap lunch a teenager can continue a nicotine addiction for another day. Smokers in Massachusetts, however, can expect to pay over ten dollars for a single pack of smokes. At ten dollars per pack an average smoker in Massachusetts can expect to pay over $3,000 a year. This is one of many reasons why Massachusetts's YRBS rating (a scale to rate the amount of smokers in high schools) is a low 16.0, giving Massachusetts the 10th lowest score out of 43 states rated. Kentucky, however, came in last on the YRBS rankings with a rate of 26.0 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). This awful rank of last is proof that the state of Kentucky is not doing enough to prevent and reduce tobacco use among teenagers and young adults. In order to do this, Kentucky must raise the state tax on tobacco products, effectively use revenue from tobacco taxes to fund smoking cessation programs, and improve the quality of anti-smoking advertising campaigns.

Teenagers normally function financially on a very fixed income, commonly working part time for minimum wage. With cigarette prices at $4.50 per pack a high school student can afford to smoke regularly, but when you double that price a student will think twice about the value of cigarettes. With the numerous health risks associated with smoking, buying cigarettes at any price is not a good choice. But if the price were higher a student would be more likely to be smoke free. When examining the aforementioned correlation between cigarette prices and YRBS rate, one can easily come to the conclusion that a solution to prevent tobacco use amongst Kentucky teenagers would be...

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...egative aspects of smoking, the more unlikely they are to believe them (Paek). It doesn't matter how accurate scientific evidence is, or how graphic the image is, Kentucky's anti-smoking efforts will continue to fall short if they bombard kids with campaigns focusing on the negative aspects of smoking.

The Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids projects that 109 thousand current students in Kentucky will die prematurely from smoking. Tobacco companies will continue to pour money into efforts which allure children and students to smoke. The government of Kentucky must break it's mold of incompetent efforts and truly make it a goal to drastically reduce smoking among kids. This is a tall order. By raising the tax on cigarettes and using the revenue from this tax to fund effective smoking cessation programs and advertisement campaigns, however, this goal can be achieved.

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