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Anti-Smokers Issue Warnings As Teenage Smoking Rates Decline in 2006

Posted on: Monday, 9 July 2007, 15:23 CDT

By TERRY PEDWELL

OTTAWA (CP) - Revived tobacco advertising campaigns and contraband cigarettes could soon reverse a trend toward lower smoking rates among teenagers, warns the Canadian Cancer Society.

Statistics Canada says teenagers - especially girls - are smoking less. Smoking rates among 15-to-19 year olds declined to 15 per cent last year, according to results of a survey conducted by the number-crunching agency last February to December.

The 2006 rate marks a significant decline from 1999, when 28 per cent of teens surveyed said they were smoking.

The decline is "a step in the right direction," said Rob Cunningham, a senior policy analyst with the Canadian Cancer Society, who credited a number of measures for the reduced teen smoking rates.

"Higher tobacco taxes, the larger picture-based package warnings, restrictions on where people can smoke including teenagers, better education and mass media campaigns" have all helped, said Cunningham.

"But we need to do a lot more because teenage smoking rates are (still) unacceptably high," he added.

Most worrisome to anti-smoking advocates is an expected onslaught of tobacco advertising following a Supreme Court of Canada ruling which maintained current federal restrictions on those ads.

The high court last month unanimously upheld a decade-old federal law which set strict limits on advertising by tobacco companies in the name of safeguarding public health.

The legislation had been challenged by three leading cigarette manufacturers, Imperial Tobacco, JTI Macdonald, and Rothmans Benson and Hedges.

The Tobacco Act, brought into force by Jean Chretien's former Liberal government in 1997, allowed cigarette makers to advertise in adult-oriented publications, in bars and pubs, and by direct mail.

The tobacco companies hadn't run such ads while the court fight was on.

But with the Supreme Court ruling out of the way, Cunningham is convinced that tobacco advertising will resume, particularly now that the companies have a potentially huge new venue for their branding messages that didn't carry the prevalence 10 years ago that it does today - the Internet.

"We're concerned about that," said Cunningham.

"We're concerned about youth exposure and that's why we're calling on federal Health Minister Tony Clement to have a total ban on advertising."

Following the Supreme Court judgement, Clement said he would review the act, although he didn't say whether the government would impose a blanket advertising ban.

Another concern is contraband cigarettes coming from aboriginal manufacturers. The federal and provincial governments need to clamp down on the problem, said Cunningham.

"There's a very serious contraband problem in Canada that has grown and we urgently need the federal government and the Ontario and Quebec governments to respond," he said.

"The presence of contraband at very cheap prices is undermining other measures to reduce smoking among the Canadian population as a whole."

Cunningham called on Ottawa to persuade the United States to cut off the supply of contraband, particularly coming from the American side of the Akwasasne Mohawk reserve, which straddles the Ontario, Quebec and New York borders.

"The Canadian government needs to persuade the American government to shut that down," he said.

The proportion of teenagers who were daily smokers declined to nine per cent in 2006 from 11 per cent in 2005.

Young women accounted for most of the decline - girls' smoking rates fell to 14 per cent from 19. Sixteen per cent of teenage boys smoked in 2006, down from 18 per cent in 2005.

Source: Canadian Press

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