Youths dragged down by smoking

Strategies to combat smoking

Point out how the advertising by tobacco companies associates their product with glamorous people and exciting events when it's really a product that, when used as directed, kills 50 per cent of its customers. The reality behind the glamour is that smokers smell bad, they cough frequently and develop bronchial problems from ordinary colds, 1 in 6 will get lung cancer, and half of them will die of a smoking-related illness.

Other strategies: If you smoke, give it up, especially if your child is approaching the teen years. If you can't give it up, at least don't smoke in your own home. Talk with your children about your own battle with cigarettes. If your child hasn't started smoking, try role-playing games in which you're a friend trying to get him to start. That will give him a chance to rehearse what to say when there's real-life pressure. If your child already smokes, find out who's selling the cigarettes and report the shop owner.

Find out what your child's school is doing about the problem, especially if a lot of the older students smoke. If there isn't an anti-smoking campaign in the school, start one. If possible, encourage non-smoking teens to talk to younger students about their own decision not to smoke. And get inolved in anti-smoking campaigns in your community. It's easier for a child to resist smoking if she lives in a relatively smoke-free environment.

Help your child quit

Ultimately, you can't stop your child from smoking if she's determined to do it. However, you can increase the chances she'll quit. Only about half of the kids who start smoking go on to become regular smokers. You still have a good chance of steering your child away from a harmful lifetime habit. Here are a few tips.

- If you smoke, stop. It's hard for your child to quit if there's smoking in the home.

- If you can't quit, at least don't smoke in the house. Be sure to tell your child how much you want to quit and how you're worried about your own health because of cigarettes.

- Never let anyone else smoke in the house or on the property.

- Limit your child's access to cash. Let her know that you will buy her things that she would normally buy with her allowance, and give her money for specific activities-money to go to a movie, for example. But eliminate the cash in her pocket that allows her to buy cigarettes.

- Talk with your child about the choices. Be sure he knows the damages that smoking causes to his own health and the health of those he spends time with. Also, try to discover what it is that attracts your child to smoking, and what might overcome that attraction.

- You might promise to reward your child with something you know she really wants on the condition that she quit smoking and stay smoke-free until she is twenty-one. Almost everyone who becomes a regular smoker gets hooked before the age of twenty-one.