Friday 28 July 2017
Youth more likely to discourage than promote smoking among peers
Young people more often discourage smoking among their peers than encourage it, new University of Otago research
suggests.
Around half of 14- and 15- year old New Zealanders have carried out at least one behaviour during the past year to
discourage smoking, most often by telling their peers that smoking is bad for their health; to stop smoking; that they
do not like smoking; and that smoking is a waste of money.
By contrast, fewer than one in ten 14- and 15- year olds did something to encourage smoking among their peers, most
typically by giving them a cigarette or offering to share a cigarette. The findings come from a new Otago study
published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health.
The Study used survey findings from the 2014 Youth Insights survey of 2919 Year 10 students from 142 high schools
throughout New Zealand.
The study’s lead researcher, Dr Louise Marsh, says the Tobacco industry often uses the argument that smoking among young
people is due to peer pressure.
“Our findings suggest that there is considerable promotion of non-smoking in the opposite direction.
“This was the case even among young people who reported smoking. It was also encouraging that Māori and Pacific young
people were more likely to discourage smoking than young people from other ethnicities,” Dr Marsh says.
Those students who discouraged smoking were also more likely to report exposure to anti-smoking messages from a range of
sources including classes at school, smokefree events and smokefree adverts. This is positive in that it indicates the
spreading of smokefree messages throughout the community might influence young peoples’ desire to be “agents of change”,
and to spread their own smokefree messages.
US research based on the Truth campaign has shown the effectiveness of “peer-to-peer” influence in reducing tobacco smoking among young people. In New
Zealand, the Health Promotion Agency’s Stop Before You Start campaign has helped shape social norms around non-smoking.
“Our findings demonstrate that a lot of informal youth-to-youth health education is already happening in NZ. This could
be extended to engage young people asactive ambassadors of Smokefree 2025,” she says.
The study, entitled “New Zealand adolescents’ discouragement of smoking among their peers” was authored by Dr Louise
Marsh, Dr Ella Iosua, Professor Rob McGee from the Cancer Society Social and Behavioural Research Unit, Department of
Preventive and Social Medicine at the University of Otago and Ms Joanna White from the NZ Health Promotion Agency.
The research is published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health and was supported by the Cancer Society of New Zealand and NZ Health Promotion Agency.
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