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Sixteen-year-old Orisel Pacheco doesn’t smoke and isn’t interested.
“ …I just don’t want to get addicted and suffer when I’m old,” Pacheco said. The Northrop High School student was one of a record majority of Indiana youths who – responding to a survey last year – said they didn’t smoke.
According to the report released Thursday by Indiana Tobacco Prevention and Cessation, youth smoking rates in the state have dropped to the lowest levels on record.
The organization’s executive director and a local health official said the main reasons for the decline were ordinances in the state banning smoking in public places, including Fort Wayne’s comprehensive smoking ban; higher cigarette prices brought on by a 2007 state cigarette tax increase; and education.
Smoking rates among high school students dropped from 23.2 percent in 2006 to 18.3 percent in 2008, a decline of 21 percent. The totals come from a survey of about 3,700 students in the state.
Pacheco is a member of Students Working Against Tobacco, an anti-tobacco program for middle school and high school students in Allen County sponsored by United Hispanic Americans Inc. Pacheco agreed to be interviewed for this story, but individual students’ answers were kept confidential.
Surveys were administered by local coalitions, not teachers, said Karla Sneegas, executive director of Indiana Tobacco Prevention and Cessation.
Middle school smoking rates were nearly halved in two years, dropping from 7.7 percent in 2006 to 4.1 percent in 2008. That was based on a survey of about 3,300 students in grades 6 to 8.
In all, 52 middle schools and 47 high schools were randomly selected by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to participate in the 2008 survey.
The percentage of teen “established smokers” – those who had smoked at least 20 of the 30 days before being surveyed – dropped by more than 25 percent, from 11.7 percent in 2006 to 8.7 percent in 2008. The drop was more good news, Sneegas said, because such teens are most likely to become lifelong smokers and therefore are most at risk for lung cancer and other problems.
Dr. Deborah McMahan, Allen County health commissioner, was also encouraged by the survey results.
“If we are sparing these young people from making a choice that might have a lifelong impact on their health and pocketbook, I think that’s a good public health thing to do,” she said.
McMahan expects rates to continue to drop.
Compared with 2000 – the first time the youth smoking surveys were conducted – high school rates have dropped 42 percent. Fewer than one in five teens surveyed in 2008 smoked, compared with nearly one in three teens in 2000. About one in 10 middle school-aged children smoked in 2000, and the number was closer to one in 24 last year.
Indiana youth smoking surveys weren’t conducted before 2000, so a fair comparison can’t be made with data derived before that. But in older studies, teen smoking rates were “never below 30 percent,” Sneegas said.
