Underage Tobacco Use

The Surgeon General of the United States of America recently called smoking, “the leading preventable cause of disease and death in the United States” (U.S. Dept of Health & Human Services, 2010). This bold assertion that will later be backed by evidence is the reasoning for this attempt to change policy. It is essential that policy on tobacco use increases. Even more so, it is important that such policies are aimed at the youth of our country. As you will come to see, stopping youthful smoking, will in turn end the cycle of tobacco use and prevent the health defects that it causes. There are many possible ways to deter young people from using tobacco. These include increasing taxes, increasing funding for prevention programs and increasing

The prevention of underage tobacco use is crucial to slowing tobacco use in adults. “It is said that over 88% of adult smokers began smoking before the age of 18” U.S. Dept of Health & Human Services, 2012). If preventative measures are taken to slow and even stop the use of tobacco in the youth, it can be inferred that the percentage of adult smokers will decrease. The following section will outline the issue of youthful tobacco use, relate tobacco use to public health and finally outline the plan of action that will later be expanded upon. It is proper that any preventative steps meant for the national population must first be proven to work in the smaller state populations. With this in mind, the preventative actions that will be later recommended will aim to fix the problem on a state level before moving any such solutions to a national level. However, in terms of describing and detailing the issue at hand, it is more proper to view statistics and current realities on a national scale and later come to focus on the state’s background facts. That being said, there are far too many underage tobacco users. “According to the Surgeon General’s 2012 report on the matter of youth smoking, 1 in 4 high school seniors is a current smoker while 1 in 5 adults is a current smoker” (U.S. Dept of Health & Human Services, 2012). This statistic is both intriguing and

In order to have a true impact on an issue it is important to understand the issue inside and out. In the case of underage smoking, one must understand why teens are drawn to smoking. Once the source is understood, intervention steps can be taken to stop the problem before it starts. For the purposes of this assignment, only the reasoning for Missouri children to begin smoking will be assessed. There are two main factors that influence a young person to smoke. These factors are relationships with smoking persons and media prevalence. Both of these are causes that must be addressed in order that intervention programs are successful. It is an unfortunate reality that the influence that family and friends have on smoking is difficult to alter. There is no way for policy alone to halt these influences. Humans have no choice as to what type of family they are born into. Likewise, they cannot choose whether or not their close friends decide to pick up smoking. However, teens do have the choice of whether or not they themselves begin to smoke. This choice can be made easier if policy change has a greater impact on young people. If teens had less access to tobacco and more knowledge of its negative effects, then they would be more likely to be deterred from adopting the habit. This is the role that policy can take on this issue. Policy can inform young people and limit access in an attempt to curb the trend of underage tobacco abuse. The second influence category that