The Effects of Education on Youth Smoking - Essay Example

The Effects of Education on Youth Smoking It is without question that over the past several decades, people have broadly come to understand the dangers that smoking entails. As a function of this realization, legislation has been passed which is helped to shift the way in which individuals integrate with tobacco products and smoking in general. For instance, only 15 years ago, it was unheard of for a cigarette manufacturer to be required to place bold print and on their product that instructed the user that continues to cause a litany of health issues. These include, but are not limited to, heart disease, high blood pressure, tooth decay, as well as cancers as well as respiratory illnesses of nearly each and every variety. Moreover, legislation has been passed around the globe which seeks to reduce the impact that certain marketing strategies can have on adolescent for instances. Legislation has recently it has United States which is that cartoon characters or other visually suggestive marketing strategies, such as Joe Camel, it should not be used due to the fact that the underage individuals to engage with cigarette merely because the marketing is specifically targeted to their demographic. Even though these changes have taken place, the sad reality is that young people continue to start smoking cigarettes each and every day. This is all particular importance not only due to the fact that children are just as susceptible to the health impacts that cigarettes entail as adults, it is also of high importance due to the fact that once a young person begin smoking, they are oftentimes likely to continue this habit well into adulthood; oftentimes until they develop a severe medical condition which can take their life. As a means of understanding this reality, the following analysis will focus upon the reasons for why young people begin smoking as a means of seeking to diminish these causal forces that exist within society and promoting a more healthful nation. A great deal of research has indicated that one of the causal reasons for adolescents to begin smoking has to do with whether or not their parents smoke. As such, a statistically higher level of likelihood exists for those adolescents whose parents, or parent as the case may be, smoke as compared to those you do not have such an influence within the home. Naturally, a further reason for why this is a factor has to do with the fact that individual adolescents whose parents/parent smoke are presented with the widespread availability of cigarettes all through their youth (Sohn, 2014). Whereas it is true that cigarettes can still be purchased, illegally, by individuals that are not of age, the ability to simply go over to the coffee table or reach onto the kitchen cabinet and take one or two cigarettes from a hack that has already been opened is something that provides a level of temptation and ease for the would-be smoker. Another core reason that exists is with regards to peer pressure. Depending on the group of friends or acquaintances that a specific individual has, the likelihood of this peer pressure coming to a point in which it would be smoker finally takes the plunge and smokes their first cigarette is extraordinarily impactful with regards to whether or not an individual will smoke during their adolescent years. Unfortunately, even though stakeholders within society have been attempting to reduce the power and influence of peer pressure for many decades, the reality of the fact is that this peer pressure is something that each and every generation faces (Xinguang & Jacques-Tiura, 2014). However, as more and more information is known about the dangers of smoking in society, the general understanding among healthcare professionals, and among interested stakeholders, is that this peer pressure will have a tremendous impact with respect to the overall number of people that begin smoking in adolescence. Although the factors that have thus far been discussed have a powerful impact with regards to adolescent smoking, perhaps the most powerful determinant has to do with the fact that smoking is still seen as a means of rebelling against the norm. Sadly, the more that smoking is sidelined and has a negative stigma, the more individuals will gladly begin smoking as a means of showing their independence and rebelling against the norms that society has created. Accordingly, there is very little that stakeholders within society can do to diminish the level of adolescent smoking that is born from a desire to rebel or be independent. By tightening the level of social expectations and/or reinforcing the fact that smoking has long-lasting negative impacts/ramifications upon the health of the individual, it is only rational to assume that these will only encourage further individuals to take up smoking due to the fact that they see it as an even further level of rebellion against the system. A component factor that ties in to peer pressure and encourages adolescents to smoke has to do with the fact that the adolescent years are ones in which a very high level of conformity exists and an emotional baseline of rebellion against system is seeing within the individual. In such a way, even if peer pressure is not something that is particularly powerful with regards to a specific adolescent, living in a society, family, or interacting with a group of friends that regularly smoked creates the impression that they are the outlier and should pick up the habit unless they be seen as odd or non-representative of the norm. Although this may seem as one in the same as your pressure, it is a slightly different shade. Effectively, society, individual experience, norms, and advertising all have a powerful impact on she or not individual the self as part of a larger group or somehow distant and separated from it. Harkening back to the discussion that took place within the introduction, it must be noted that tobacco companies are not clueless with regards to the fact that individuals who begin smoking within their early years are oftentimes lifelong smokers. As a function of this, even though certain types of legislation exists around the globe which helps to reduce the overall exposure that children have to cigarette marketing specific marketing techniques, tobacco companies are still intimately aware of the fact that in order to provide their firms with a continuing level of guaranteeing profitability, they must engage with individuals at their most vulnerable (Veeranki et al., 2014). Sadly, even though certain governments have attempted to restrict the overall level of access that children have cigarette advertising, the globalized nature of the world and the pervasive to which media proliferates nearly each and every aspect of life creates a situation in which this is an increasingly difficult, if not impossible, task. From the information that has been conveyed, it is clear and apparent that even though cigarette smoking is an extraordinarily damaging activity, individuals in youth find themselves engaging with a line of thinking that does not place health concern as the primary focus. This is understandable due to the fact that individuals in early adolescence are generally in extraordinarily good health. In this way they believe they have nothing to worry about with respect to individual forms of cancer, emphysema, heart disease, or high blood pressure. In such a manner, this creates an extraordinarily difficult situation for those individuals within society to seek to continue to reduce the rates of adolescent smoking. Ultimately, even though restrictions can be placed upon the means by which cigarette companies advertise their products, a further level of censure and societal stigma creates a situation in which cigarette smoking, to be seen as even more rebellious; encouraging those individuals that seek to go against the norm to integrate with cigarette smoking as a means of representing their rebellion. References Sohn, K. (2014). A note on the effects of education on youth smoking in a developing country. Journal Of The Asia Pacific Economy,19(1), 66-73. doi:10.1080/13547860.2013.803845 Veeranki, S. P., Mamudu, H. M., Anderson, J. L., & Zheng, S. (2014). Worldwide Never-Smoking Youth Susceptibility to Smoking.Journal Of Adolescent Health, 54(2), 144-150. doi:10.1016/j.jadohealth.2013.07.036 Xinguang, C., & Jacques-Tiura, A. J. (2014). Smoking Initiation Associated With Specific Periods in the Life Course From Birth to Young Adulthood: Data From the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997. American Journal Of Public Health, 104(2), e119-e126. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2013.301530 Read More