Tobacco education and prevention programs can help younger children understand the dangers of smoking before they take up the habit.
Why Children are Prone to Begin Smoking
While we’d like to think that children are smarter than their ages might suggest, what a child is exposed to can change the way they feel about even the most dangerous things. When a child is exposed to something again and again, it becomes something that isn’t as shocking. This is especially the case when it comes to smoking. Since a person doesn’t fall over dead after smoking a cigarette, it’s difficult for a child to understand that years of smoking can cause a number of smoking related health problems.
Since smoking is regularly seen in television and movies, this becomes a part of the culture and a part of their experience. With quitting smoking education, they might be able to not only see how difficult it is to quit, but they will also be able to see why it might be more important to avoid smoking in the first place.
Ways to Stop the Cycle of Smoking
For children who are already exposed to media which paints a picture of smoking being cool, they might need to see graphic pictures of diseased lungs of smokers who died from cancer. For other children, they might simply need to know how costly cigarettes are or perhaps the long term effects of the use of cigarettes:
- Increase risk of lung cancer
- Smelly clothes, yellow teeth, wrinkled skin
- Reduced athletic capacity
Children often need to know exactly how something will affect their lives in order to stop doing something which might be harmful for them. No matter how dangerous something is, they need to know the consequences in specific terms to make the best decision for their health. Outlining the dangers of tobacco products will help them truly understand how ‘cool’ smoking is.