Public Health

Youth-led smoking prevention program in Florida continues to be effective

CHICAGO, Aug 10 (Reuters Health) - The Florida Pilot Program on Tobacco Control, designed to prevent middle school and high school students from smoking, continues to get results.

"We've observed substantially important and statistically significant changes in cigarette use and intent to use cigarettes among our youth," Dr. Ursula E. Bauer of the Florida Department of Health said here at the 11th World Conference on Tobacco or Health.

Based on three consecutive annual surveys of more than 20,000 Florida youth, Dr. Bauer and other state researchers say that the positive changes they saw in the first year of the program are continuing. "These changes include a 40% reduction in current cigarette use and a 23% increase in those who have never used cigarettes among middle school students, and an 18% reduction in cigarette use and a 35% increase in never-use among high school students," Dr. Bauer said.

"This translates into a minimum of 49,000 fewer youth smokers in Florida and up to 16,000 fewer deaths if these kids had gone on to become and remain regular smokers," she added.

The Florida program involves a youth-directed, aggressive media campaign that vilifies tobacco marketing, along with school-based skill-building programs, community organizations involving youth, and enforcement of youth tobacco access restrictions. Its results to date are reported in The Journal of the American Medical Association for August 9.

"We attribute the changes in cigarette use and intentions to use cigarettes among Florida's youth to our tobacco prevention program because of what we are not seeing in the rest of the country," Dr. Bauer commented. She noted that the national Youth Risk Behavior Survey and the Monitor the Future Project have not reported reductions in youth smoking behavior as great as those seen in Florida.

Dr. Bauer said that a special survey is under way to see if youth who avoid smoking through high school continue to resist cigarettes when they go to college or enter the workforce.

JAMA 2000;284:723-728.

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