Smoke Signals

I can’t remember the last time I came home smelling like smoke. Or the last time I worried about my kids breathing in a bunch of smoke. Most of our friends and relatives who smoke hold off around the kids, and with the new city and county smoking bans, it’s going to be rare indeed for the kids to even see people smoking across the room.

So I wonder … will they be less likely to try it themselves? Or will they be more likely because it’s something exotic? Will it be like immunizations — parents who’ve never experienced a child sick with measles or whooping cough are forgoing vaccines against those diseases, and now the rates are on the rise.  Maybe my kids, never having seen a smoker puffing away despite a hacking cough, will be oblivious to the dangers.

According to a nationwide study that came out in December, more teens had used marijuana (21 percent) than had smoked a cigarette (19 percent) in the previous month. The researchers theorized that this could be because they are less likely to associate marijuana use with health risks. Their disapproval of marijuana use has also declined.

Contrast that with cigarettes: Anti-smoking campaigns are everywhere. St. Louis County, for example, received a $7.6 million federal stimulus grant last year to launch a major drive against smoking. One of the county’s priorities was eliminating smoking on school campuses. It’s spending $2 million of the grant on a media blitz.

Smoking bans are becoming so common that this month’s news of two university campuses going smoke-free drew a mere couple of paragraphs online. Harris-Stowe State University and the St. Louis Community College system both banned smoking earlier this month, joining Washington University and Fontbonne University. Most other schools in the region also have partial bans; see a detailed list here.

Back in the day, my friends could smoke in their dorm rooms without too much hassle — unless the leaf of choice happened to be marijuana, when a neighboring student was almost guaranteed to turn the guilty party in. How times change.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m not calling those the “good old days.” I very much hated coming home smelling like smoke — and I still do. I’m all in favor of the bills in the Missouri Senate that would raise the pathetically low cigarette tax (lowest in the nation) from 17 cents. The 12-cent-a-pack raise would be fine with me, but I’d go along with the $1-a-pack version too.

Still, I wonder whether demonizing cigarettes will backfire a bit. Wouldn’t it be a better message to teach kids the risks of any of the drugs they put in their body — be it nicotine or alcohol or caffeine or THC or ecstasy (use of which is also on the rise).

By Amy De La Hunt, Health Blogger for SmartParenting