Antismoking Policies in Schools

Antismoking Policies in Schools

        Tobacco use is one of the leading preventable causes of mortality in the United States. Even though it is spread out across the whole population, the young adults between the ages of 19-29 years old are the highest, with a 30-day prevalence of 17% (National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (US) Office on Smoking and Health 1). For the high school students, the prevalence rate is 9%. The prevention of smoking is mostly targeting the young population and is primarily focused on informing them through mass media and school and community settings.

There is the creation of the relevant policies that will limit the introduction of the tobacco products in the schools, and this will go a long way in the deliberation of the various aspects of the problems. The tobacco products are often advertised in a way that will attract young people. The policies will focus on a way that will change this strategy, focus on the student’s behaviors and to the plans. The introduction of anti-smoking policies has various degrees of success depending on the approach taken by the affected category of individuals. The anti-smoking policies in schools increases the awareness of the issue, but there have to be effective strategies in place that will lead to both individual and institutional success in the offering of the services.

        Smoking behavior is taught at an early age. The high prevalence of high school and college students partaking in smoking shows that there is a need to be policies to stop this. One of the ways to prevent this is the complete ban on tobacco by both staff and students in school premises (Bach 1). When there is a focus on creating these policies, the children will not be exposed to tobacco use while in their comfort areas but will view it as a terrible issue to their normal health. Teaching smoking policies leads to the introduction on the harm that tobacco- use will have on the children. This will be followed up with real-life examples of people who are overcoming the tobacco menace in their life, and this goes on to inform the place of the lives of the children. Teaching the policies will allow the children to have the appropriate form for how they should behave and will allow for the manifestation of the challenges that may affect them in their future lives.

        The formative years of a human being are those spent during their school life. The schools serve as social areas of growth and development of children. Any information introduced to the children while in these areas sticks for their whole lives. At the moment, the advertisements are majorly targeting this age group to make it appear cool to be smoking. The cigarette manufacturing industries are also keen to enter the market and influence the perception of the children. They sponsor activities in the schools and even lead each other to success by focusing on changing the understanding of the children. When there is the introduction of the antismoking policies in the school curriculum, the students get to understand the effects of smoking and why they should not partake in it. The place of the systems is the informing of the children on what they should and should not do. They will make fear create in the students on the effects of smoking, and why they should always resist the drugs. The policies will allow the children to understand how they should limit themselves from smoking.

TUPE which stands for tobacco use Prevention educator is a program that creates these policies to educate the youth about the harms of smoking. (California Department of Education 2018) describes the TUPE program and stated “the Tobacco-Use Prevention Education (TUPE) funds allocated to the California Department of Education (CDE) for school-based tobacco-use prevention education programs, the California Health and Safety Code Section 104430 requires at least two-thirds of the local assistance funds be allocated to local educational agencies (LEAs) for tobacco-use prevention, intervention, and cessation programs in schools as competitive grants.” So, when there are restrictions on tobacco especially in public places, the students will feel how the smoking habit is destructive both to themselves and to those around them. An effective smoking policy at this young age will offer the students hope for overcoming the smoking addiction, by providing them with a chance to seek the necessary care required, since they will have all the required information at their fingertips.

        The tobacco industry has a significant impact in the young population. The tobacco industry focuses on using advertisements that will attract all users, and will not limit this even to the adolescents. Tobacco companies often sponsor events in schools, under the guise of anti-smoking information (Bach 2). The tobacco companies are central to the development of anti-smoking policies in schools and the general education system. This leads to the creation of rules that will favor them more than they will be beneficial to the children. However, the teaching of the anti-smoking policies will lead to the knowledge sharing of the effects of the drugs, and the specific allocations that the industry generals are putting in place to limit the use of the drugs. The prevention practices pushed forward by the companies have been found to have no effects to the smoking behaviors of the target population, even though they have been widely applied both in national and state levels (Pierce et al. 258). The companies claim to be finishing the dependence on cigarettes by the young adolescents, but they are doing this as a guide to increase their advertisements. Independent school policies will teach the children how to evade the menace of smoking, as they will show how it is addictive and will lead to the destruction of their health. The antismoking policies are a direct contradiction to what the industry wants, and there will, therefore, be stronger delivery of the children from the effects of addiction as a result of smoking. When taught in schools, there will be increased public knowledge, and the ability of the people to evade the habit and usage will lower cases of adolescent addiction. There will be an opportunity for the students to determine the stopping policies that are focused on reducing their dependence on smoking.

        Antismoking policies have different effects both on the individual and institutional levels. There are different antismoking policies in place, and they cover different perspectives in the same area. The intention during the creation of the procedures is one of the essential factors that will affect the perception of the involved people, and how they will react to the changes around them with regard to consumption of the products (Lovato et al. 1). One example of a policy is that which focuses on the perception of the people and has the goals, and the purpose indicated during the performance. The various allocations while developing the policies allow the administrators to establish those that focus on the place of the people, and how they interact with each other. These policies have increased success both on the school and individual levels. The other type of policies is that which focuses on eliminating all use of tobacco on the premises, with these having lower prevalence at the school level but higher at the individual level. The 2002 Ontario Youth Smoking Survey10 found that students who reported full bans at school smoked fewer cigarettes per day than students who reported partial or no bans (Jama Pediatrics 2018).

The first policy is an all-around policy that focuses on the students and their perception of life in general, rather than only on the effects of tobacco usage. It is as a result of effective teaching on the practices that should be followed, and those which are acceptable in regular practice. The final purpose of avoidance is the most critical factor to the students, and all the practices should, therefore, focus on developing policies that are easily understandable, and which will have all round development for the students. The teaching of the strategies that have a clear purpose, and which outline the place of drug addiction and usage in the institutions is the most critical factor for their introduction in schools. Teaching on how smoking will affect the students in their future life will lead to lower cases of addiction and the need to experiment. The policies that only focus on eliminating usage on the premises do not go well with the students since there is little room for teaching the effects of the usage. The effects of these types of policies or the lack of training on anti-smoking policies are the reduction in the institutional level of usage. The students will adhere to the rules and will not smoke while in school. However, when they are away, they will want to experiment with that which they were severely restricted from accessing, and this will increase their addiction in their later lives.

        Strong policies are as a result of student administration cooperation (Lovato et al. 1). There is public participation in the development of the systems, and this leads to an increased level of understanding and success of the policies. The school administration and the students come together for the creation of proper policies that will limit the use of cigarettes for the students while they are both at home and school. The antismoking policies created out of this procedure are all round, and they lead to an increase in the perception of the students on how they will interact with each other. The students will feel that they were a part of the process, and the teaching will, therefore, be very easy. The creation of the policy, since it is a public process, is necessarily a training on the rules and the procedures for antismoking while at the institution. The creation will focus on the various aspects, and the consequences of smoking, especially on the young adults, including the possibility for addiction in their later lives. This teaching will lead to an increased understanding in the students on what they are expected to do even when no one is watching them, and this will lead to a reduced addiction level both at the institutional level and individually. There is a focus on the development of rules that will ensure that the students are not left out to dry, but that their perception of life is maintained, with a focus on leading them away from addiction in their later lives.

        The introduction of newer forms of cigarettes poses a threat to the existing policies in place. The rules put in place in schools focus on the elimination of tobacco smoking on school premises while eliminating the need for the students to engage in the activity. However, there is a change in the perception of the students, with the introduction of the new e-cigarettes (Ulrich 1). Electronic cigarettes are the modern adolescent marketed smoking products, that focus on introducing the young people to smoking using an innovative product that will vaporize nicotine, thereby eliminating the regular smoking effects. The cigarettes are appealing to the young due to the sleekness and the ability to experiment with different flavors. However, they have been found to have various effects that will affect the student, just like ordinary cigarettes. The policies have to include the provision of these products in their authority. However, the focus of the system is the development of policies that will protect the minors from any harmful practices, primarily related to smoking. The teaching of smoking policies will allow the students to be active enough, and their focus will be on personal development on how they will lead themselves to success by focusing on the effects of the drugs. Antismoking policies have provisions that explain why they are in place, and the teaching of the same will lead to the affected students to have a basis on which they will stop themselves from partaking in the drugs, rather than when they were left on their own to get their way of doing things. The need to experiment is usually broken by teaching the students on what they should or should not do while taking part in the reclamation processes. The administrators of the policies will prepare the students on the effects of experimenting, and they will therefore not be awash by the new technological advancements in this area. The focus of the students who have been taught on the provisions of their policies is on overcoming addiction through abstinence from any form of smoking irrespective of the channel used.

        The teaching of the antismoking policies will lead to an increased awareness in the institution’s fraternity. Both the students and their parents will have more knowledge on the practices used to lure the youth into destructive practices (Lovato et al. 1). The administrators of the policies in the institutions usually carry out timely and structured processes and developmental practices that will focus on changing the narrative for the students. They will then teach the students on how they can stop themselves from being victims. The increase in the awareness will also lead to an increase in how the students carry themselves about after their school life. There are specific allocations that increase how they will conduct their lives since the focus is solely on the development of amicable solutions to the problem of smoking in schools. The teachers will have increased knowledge on how to pinpoint the cases of addiction in their students, with the latter being in a position to recognize their peers who are engaging with the drugs. The students who discover their peers are taking drugs will inform the necessary parties, and there will be a focus on alienating these people and taking them for rehabilitation. The teaching of the antismoking policies will lead to increased community awareness on the issue, and there will be an increase in the ways that the involved people deal with the issues that are affecting them (Bach 1). The focus of the policies will be on wholesome development of the communities through the effective development of rules and procedures that will increase the perception of the people to drug use in institutions, while at the same time offering opportunities for rehabilitation.

        The antismoking policies in place offer an opportunity for the deliberation of the various aspects affecting the students and provide an opportunity for the necessary stakeholders to lead and reduce the level of addiction among the students. The interference by the tobacco industry to defeat the movement of the policies and the introduction of technological advancements in this area is the primary reason for the pushing of the focus on the policies. This leads to the creation of a balanced community that can focus on the development of all the involved aspects of development. The statistics produced on prevalence among the young adolescents should lead to the increase in the efforts by the involved parties to focus on developing themselves and allowing for the deliberation of the various factors affecting them. With the study I conducted, I posted my statement of “Should anti-smoking policies be taught in schools?” 95% of  individudals stated it should be and the other 5% stated no. When I asked the individuals, who said “No” their responses were that educating students on tobacco will get them curious and more students would end up in partaking actions to try to smoke. Concluding all the research I found and statistics I gathered anti-smoking policies may have many advantages and disadvantages, however as the generations is increasing anti-smoking policies can help a percentage of smoking rates amongst the youth.

Works Cited

1. Bach, Laura. “How schools can help students stay tobacco-free.” 2017, www.tobaccofreekids.org/assets/factsheets/0153.pdf.
2. Barnett TA, Gauvin L, Lambert M, O’Loughlin J, Paradis G, McGrath JJ. The Influence of School Smoking Policies on Student Tobacco Use. Arch Pediatric  2007
3. Evans-Whipp, Tracy J, et al. “The Impact of School Tobacco Policies on Student Smoking in Washington State, United States and Victoria, Australia.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Molecular Diversity Preservation International (MDPI), 26 Mar. 2010
4. Lovato, Chris Y., et al. “The Influence of School Policies on Smoking Prevalence Among Students in Grades 5-9, Canada, 2004-2005.” Preventing Chronic Disease, 2010, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2995590/.
5. National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (US) Office on Smoking and Health. Preventing tobacco use among youth and young adults: A report of the surgeon general. 2012, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK99239/.
6. Pierce, John P., et al. “What public health strategies are needed to reduce smoking initiation?” Tobacco Control, vol. 21, no. 2, 2012, pp. 258-264, tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/21/2/258.
7. Ulrich, Amanda. “E-Cigarettes Cloud Schools’ Anti-Smoking Policies.” Education Week, 29 July 2014, www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/07/29/37ecigarettes.h33.html. Accessed 16 Dec. 2018.

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