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No Butts About It
Keeping Teens and Tweens Smoke-free
By Gina Roberts-Grey
As your child grows, you work to instill good manners, help him learn how to interact with peers and teach him how to read. You reinforce habits and behaviors that model your values, and you attempt to ensure your child eats healthy balanced meals. Among the countless lessons parents aim to teach their young children, it can be easy to overlook reinforcing some values in your older child that you confidently instilled in him as a toddler.
Commenting that smoking is bad for a person's health or discouraging a toddler from pretending to smoke is an obvious action for parents. As tweens and teens develop personalities, attitudes and interests, revisiting the basic message that smoking is a detrimental habit becomes as vital to your child's well being as learning to read.
Your child's mounting independence opens the door to a dangerous world of numerous physical and emotional health risks. With the increasing amount of peer pressure our children must face, and the glamorous images splayed on movie and television screens, youth tobacco use remains a prevalent threat to the health and safety of our children.
If all stores, vending machines and gas stations strictly adhered to the laws which prohibit selling tobacco products to anyone under the age of 18, it would be understandable to wonder how are our children obtain cigarettes. A study conducted by The Centers for Disease Control reveal that 30 percent of smokers under 18 give someone else money to purchase cigarettes, and 25 percent borrow tobacco products from someone else. Another 18 percent either purchase cigarettes from vending machines, steal them from a store, peer or family member, or acquire them through other creative alternatives.