no gd 4 u ...

Otago Magazine, February 2005

Smkn no gd 4 u. This could be the smoke-free message of the near future as Otago researchers have identified that youngsters are slipping under the tobacco control radar.

It seems that efforts to target school-age smokers may not be starting early enough – and that health professionals could use the evolving electronic communications world as a vehicle for health promotion.

Reporting the 2002 New Zealand Youth Lifestyle Study, PhD student Helen Darling and Dr Tony Reeder, of the Social and Behavioural Research in Cancer Group at the Dunedin School of Medicine, found some alarming results. The 14- to 17-year-olds surveyed revealed tobacco experimentation at an age as young as seven, an age well before most school smokefree programmes kick in. This suggests a need for earlier intervention, and further findings point to ways it could be done.

A high percentage of children said they use the internet for health information, so that is an obvious avenue, Darling says. The opportunity exists to help develop the critical acumen that children need to bring to their internet use – Google returns 18 million hits for smoking, and tobacco companies have set up websites that can be attractive and hard to distinguish from legitimate health sites.

Direct intervention with young people will be happening in Christchurch next year as a result of work by Dr Greg Hamilton of the Christchurch School of Medicine and Health Sciences.

Partnership Health Canterbury (a PHO) has agreed to fund a smoking-cessation pilot study in three Christchurch schools based on a successful schools’ programme in Perth which Hamilton investigated.

“The better-designed school studies consistently show a reduction in cigarette smoking among young people,” he says. Teasing out which parts of the programmes are having an effect is the tricky part.

To that end the Christchurch programme will use a threepronged approach, combining classroom interventions with support for pupils who want to quit, and the development of school policies where smoking is seen as a health issue.

“While schools may view smoking as a discipline problem, they also need to address it as a health issue,” Hamilton says.

At the Christchurch School’s National Addiction Centre, the smoking habits of a group of adolescent psychiatric outpatients is also being studied.

Although she is yet to “push the button” on the data, assistant research fellow Karen de Zwart hopes she and colleague Associate Professor Doug Sellman may be able to cast light on the known, higher-smoking rate among young people with psychiatric problems.

“As far as we know we’re the first study that’s interviewed young people face to face at an outpatients’ unit regarding their nicotine use.”

The results were surprising. “Once we got bums on seats these young people totally opened up to us. We got some amazing data on their drug-taking behaviour.”

The positive response from the young people also pointed to a future in which similar groups could be educated about the dangers of smoking.

“Clinicians are missing a vital opportunity to administer smoke-cessation interventions.”

Sean Flaherty

So you've tried everthing but just can't give up smoking? Join the club. You won’t be wanting for company.

Nicotine is a highly addictive chemical so it’s little wonder that the best advice outside marooning smokers on a desert island without their cigarettes involves letting them down gently with nicotine replacement therapy. Maroon them if you must, but be kind and float them ashore with a crate of nicotine gum or patches.

Nicotine substitution works as well as or better than anything else, say Otago tobacco researchers.

Research psychologist Karen de Zwart says she might throw a cell phone with a speed-dial to smoking help service Quitline into that survival crate.

“It’s a really difficult thing to do. Less than five per cent of smokers will quit on their first attempt.

“What with free quit packs, support from trained quit advisors and subsidised nicotine replacement therapy,

I cannot stress the effectiveness of the Quitline enough.”

Quitline: 0800 778 778 www.quit.org.nz