How Can Teenagers Be Prevented From Smoking?
India has seen a surge in anti-tobacco campaigns in recent decades. This is done to the point of having a clear display of images of the deleterious aspects of nicotine addiction, even on virtually all cigarette boxes found in retail. Indian movies are replete with smoking scenes — and each one of them is mandated to carry a stern anti-smoking/quit smoking display glued on them.
But does all of this stop hordes of young Indians from caving to the peer pressure of smoking? Evidently, the campaigns haven’t been as effective as they have been expected to be; and smoking habits continue to be a harmful trend among innocent youth and teenagers. For an entire generation to be healthier than they would be otherwise, smoking cessation treatment is needed to force a decline in smoking habits.
How bad is tobacco, really?
The World Health Organization categorically says that worldwide, every year 4 million people breathe their last owing to their usage of tobacco. The proportions are likely worse in developing countries like India, where tobacco lobbies market their products to entrap gullible children from developing nations.
Annually, about 5,50,000 teenagers and youngsters — including thousands of school children — become dependent on tobacco. About 33% of them die. This figure should force large swathes of youngsters to abstain from the drug, but unfortunately, owing to a variety of factors, smoking goes on unabated, and the youngsters who do not die young from tobacco usage, grow up to be unwise adults who die later, due to their prolonged usage of the dreaded smoke.
Why do teenagers begin smoking?
In one study where school students were the participants, most of them concurred with the idea of smoking habits stemming from a general curiosity towards smoking products. In fact, it is observed that an overwhelming majority of them (75-94%) begin out of curiosity.
Celebrities and sportspeople in the nation have a social responsibility whether they like it or not. Because the study also indicates that about 65% of the youth start smoking because their role models do.
Children pay importance to come across as fashionable, and because their cool friends smoke, about 84% of them begin the habit, too. No, smoking does not make anyone fashionable, factually, and young people who do buy into such juvenile theories may need professional psychiatrist treatment in Coimbatore.
What is a major cause of concern, psychologically speaking, is that a staggering 94% of the youth cite their loneliness and boredom as a triggering point to their habit of smoking.
How smoking tobacco/nicotine could harm your body
Before we begin discussing anti-smoking medication, it’s important to talk about the detrimental effects smoking tobacco can have on the youth and adults alike. Nicotine can cause physical dependence on it, and such a dependency can certainly impact the body in such a way that there is a certain risk of the following:
- Lung cancer
- Cardiovascular (heart) diseases
- Pulmonary (lungs) diseases such as COPD
- Increased risk of stroke
- More lung diseases such as bronchitis, and emphysema
- Asthma attacks
- Colon cancer
- Acute myeloid leukaemia — blood cancer
- Pancreatic and stomach cancer
- Oral cancer
Ways to stop children from using nicotine
Smoking nicotine products is as much about a psychological dependency as it’s about the obvious physical dependency on them. Smokers start at a young age and find a certain ritualistic pleasure in smoking. In young people, smoking can be especially harmful in their educational and professional obligations. Therefore, addiction relief treatment — such as NRT, nicotine polacrilex gums, NNS, amongst others — is pertinent to take for youth who are in the depths of tobacco addiction, ideally from the best psychiatrist hospital in Coimbatore.
