Developing a Tobacco Control Strategy for Young People in the West Midlands
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Author(s)
Bryan Stoten and Denise Milnes
Presenter(s)
Bryan Stoten Co Director, Tobacco Control Collaborating Centre, Warwick
Abstract
80% of life long smokers take up the habit whilst still adolescents. Reducing the damage done by smoking to people with an existing addiction it is a key element of any tobacco control strategy to prevent young people adopting the habit in the first place. It has been seen to be one of the least affective interventions in the tobacco control armoury however to address young people’s smoking behaviour.
The West Midlands RYGHT group formed out of the five new cluster forms across the West Midlands have pooled their resources to create a region-wide strategy which has been kept deliberately simple and which addresses a limited number of goals:
•Reducing access by underage young people.
•Reprofiling smoking in the PHSE syllabus.
•Developing a smokefree homes.
•Targeting vulnerable children.
•Developing induction programmes with public sector staff in contact with young people to demonstrate the significance of smoking as a factor of determining eventual life chances.
The paper will concentrate on:
•Ways of engaging with school and college academic staff.
•Addressing the political imperatives.
•Getting ‘sign up’ from Public Sector staff to addressing smoking.
•Address smoking in homes with children.
Source of funding: West Midlands Government Office
