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Action on Smoking and Health
A National Legal-Action Antismoking Organization Entirely Supported by Tax-Deductible Contributions
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Why You Should Talk to Your Child About Smoking and Smokeless Tobacco [08/10-6]
Excerpts from: Talking to Your Child About Smoking and Smokeless Tobacco
KidsHealth.org [08/10/04]
Advertisers spend billions of dollars each year trying to get children to smoke. Talking to your kids honestly, clearly, and convincingly about the dangers of tobacco and nicotine addiction is an essential part of good parenting. To be blunt: your words can save their lives. Read this article to find out how.
Why Do I Need to Talk to My Child About Tobacco?
According to the U.S. Surgeon General, smoking is the chief cause of preventable deaths in the United States. At the same time, however, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that each day more than 3,000 kids become regular smokers and that about one third of these children will eventually die a "smoker's death" from cancer, heart disease, or lung disease.
And the danger isn't just smoking cigarettes. Smokeless tobacco (chewing or spit tobacco) can also lead to nicotine addiction, oral cancer, gum disease, and an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, including heart attacks.
Despite these dangers, about 16% of U.S. high school boys in grades 9 to 12 use smokeless tobacco, with rates rising as high as 35% in some western states. Nicotine affects mood as well as the heart, lungs, stomach, and nervous system. Short-term effects of smoking include coughing and throat irritation. Over time, more serious conditions may develop, including increases in heart rate and blood pressure. Smoking also leads to bronchitis and emphysema and increases the risk of heart attacks.
Finally, numerous studies indicate that young smokers are more likely to experiment with marijuana, cocaine, heroin, or other illicit drugs.
About 90% of today's adult smokers started as children, so it's important that you take the opportunity to talk to your kid about smoking before she starts. Older children who haven't started to smoke are less likely to begin smoking.
"The most important way you can prepare to deal with smoking is by establishing good communication. The more you talk with your child, the better chance you have of staying close when things get tough," says Neil Izenberg, MD, pediatrician and author of How to Raise Non-Smoking Kids.
What Should I Say?
When talking to your child about smoking, Dr. Izenberg recommends that parents stick to the facts. "There's no need to invent - the truth is bad enough," he says. Resist lecturing or turning your advice into a sermon; the point is to communicate values such as honesty, self-reliance, and responsibility to your children - and how good values make good decisions easier to make.
How can you translate these standards to your child? To start with, even the youngest child can understand that smoking is bad for your body. Young children also imitate their parents, so if you smoke, quit. Kids want to be like their parents, so setting an example is vitally important. You can also establish firm rules that exclude smoking and smokeless tobacco from your house and explain why: smokers smell bad, look bad, and feel bad.
Teach children from an early age about the differences between images used by advertisers of tobacco products and reality. One antismoking group suggests letting kids compare an ad for a toy on television with what the toy really does, and then using this example to compare images of people smoking in ads and what smoking is truly like. Teaching media literacy (helping your kids become critical consumers) is an important parenting task.
As children grow older, steer them toward positive role models in entertainment or sports who don't smoke, and continue to compare images in movies or television of heroes who smoke with what smoking does to real people. "Make it part of your daily routine to sit and talk with your kid," Dr. Izenberg says. "Don't avoid subjects because you might find them uncomfortable or you're afraid you don't know just the right words."
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