Smoking And Strategies For Prevention

Introduction

Smoking is referred to the practice where the individuals’ burn a substance to breathe in to taste the smoke created and to get it absorbed into the bloodstream. The teenagers are mostly involved in smoking tobacco and drugs and they are influenced to some because of various psychological and sociological factors. In this easy, the psychological and sociological factors that are influencing teenagers to smoke are to be discussed along with strategies to control the influence of the factors to stop smoking.

Psychological and Sociological Factors influence Smoking

The Psychological factors are the emotional factors that influence the mentality of the individuals to execute certain activities (Joly et al. 2017).

In teenagers, the psychological factors that influence smoking are mainly stress and depression along with hopelessness. As mentioned by Azodi et al. (2017), teenagers often experience stress due to their internal and external struggle to make place and achieve greater good in society. It leads them to get influenced to smoke as they feel it is going to lower their perception of stress and make them feel relieved. This is evident as nicotine present in smoke act as relaxing agent that makes people experiences an immediate sense of relaxation (Khayyati et al. 2016).

However, in the longer time, it is found that nicotine leads teenagers to experience cardiovascular diseases along with other complications (Groner et al. 2016). As argued by Khademalhosseini et al. (2015), teenagers often experience depression due to lack of performance in studies. This is because lower performance in studies makes the parents of the teenagers get lower praise from them, in turn, making them feel depressed out of feeling that they cannot perform well or achieve anything in life. This leads the teenagers to get addicted to smoking as they feel that smoking is going to help them get relieved to forget their pain of depression and achieve peace at mind.

However, in the longer time, it is found that nicotine leads teenagers to experience cardiovascular diseases along with other complications (Groner et al. 2016). As argued by Khademalhosseini et al. (2015), teenagers often experience depression due to lack of performance in studies. This is because lower performance in studies makes the parents of the teenagers get lower praise from them, in turn, making them feel depressed out of feeling that they cannot perform well or achieve anything in life. This leads the teenagers to get addicted to smoking as they feel that smoking is going to help them get relieved to forget their pain of depression and achieve peace at mind.

The lack of hope among the teenagers to get success in life and emotional distress regarding the way to build an effective career leads them to get influenced in smoking (Warner, 2017). This is because they feel that smoking is going to help them cope with distress and hopelessness.

There are wide number of sociological factors that influence teenagers to smoke such as peer pressure, family circumstances, parenting style and others (Rozi et al. 2016).

In households, where the children from a very young age experience their family members, as well as parents to be involved in smoking, are often found to be influenced to smoke. This is because the family circumstances make teenagers think that smoking is good in nature as it is already been practised in the family (Xu et al. 2016). It is evident from the statistics where 6-7% of teenagers were seen to be influenced to regular smoking those are living with one or more smoker in the family (digital.nhs.uk, 2018).

The social factor such as peer pressure in school and colleges leads teenagers to get influenced to smoke. This is because peers of teenagers make them understand that smoking is related to showcasing the strong and natured character of the individuals. Moreover, peer pressure makes teenagers smoke as few peers are seen to force them to get involved in the activity for fun or they are being abused. Thus, out of fear and pressure of the peers in the society the teenagers initiate to smoke (Sheer and Mao, 2018).

The easy access to tobacco and other nature of smoking substances in the society act as social factor that influences teenagers to smoke. This is because easily availability of the substances makes it readily available to be purchased for use of smoking by the individuals (Hughes et al. 2015).

The social condition that boosts the experimental use of tobacco is another sociological factor that leads teenagers to get influenced to smoke. This is because teenagers initiate to try smoking for fun at the first instance out of curiosity of the way tobacco tastes which later make them gradually get addicted to it (Bauld et al. 2015).

Strategies to support Teenagers to avoid Smoking

The teenagers can be supported in many ways to help them avoid smoking which are as follows:

Awareness regarding smoking

The health institutions along with the government are to develop better awareness campaign regarding smoking for the teenagers where the teenagers are to be informed with proper details regarding the way smoking is destroying their health. This is because proper health awareness regarding smoking helps to educate the teenagers regarding the way smoking tobacco and other substances are slowly deteriorating their health in the long-term (Omu et al. 2017).

Reduce availability of tobacco: The availability of tobacco is required to be restricted for the teenagers to avoid them from smoking. In order to accomplish this, the number of tobacco selling shops in and around areas of college and schools is to be lowered. This is because it would reduce the easy availability of tobacco substances for smoking to the teenagers making them avoid getting influenced to smoking.

Strict laws: The government require implementing strict laws for teenagers where they are to be restricted from buying or using tobacco and other harmful substances. In case the laws are violated, the teenagers are to fined or put into bars for violation of such rules. This is going to lower the influence of smoking for teenagers by making them fear of involving into such activity due to lawful obligation.

Family involvement: The parents of teenagers are to be influenced and educated regarding the way they are to inform their children who are in their teenage years to avoid smoking. Moreover, the parents are to be influenced to keep the family environment in such ways that do not support smoking. This is because the family environment is found to be one of the key sociological factors that influence smoking among teenagers.

Improve psychological health: The teenagers in the school and colleges are to be offered free counselling each month to help them cope with their psychological conditions such as stress, depression, hopelessness and others. This is required so that teenagers do not choose smoking as their way to cope with stress and other emotional condition.

Conclusion

The above discussion informs that psychological factors such as stress, depression and hopelessness and sociological factors such as family influence, peer-pressure and others are influencing teenagers to smoke. In relation to this, strategies such as better awareness regarding smoking, reducing the availability of tobacco, implementing strict laws and others are required to avoid teenagers to smoke.

References

• Azodi, F., Sharif, F., Azodi, P., Shirazi, Z.H., Khalili, A. and Jahanpour, F., 2017. The reasons of tendency toward hookah smoking among teens and youth in Iran-A qualitative study. Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Research, 9(9), pp.1642-1646.
• Bauld, L., MacKintosh, A.M., Ford, A. and McNeill, A., 2015. E-cigarette uptake amongst UK youth: experimentation, but little or no regular use in nonsmokers. Nicotine & Tobacco Research, 18(1), pp.102-103.
• digital.nhs.uk 2018, Part 4: Smoking patterns among young people, Available at:
• Hughes, K., Bellis, M.A., Hardcastle, K.A., McHale, P., Bennett, A., Ireland, R. and Pike, K., 2015. Associations between e-cigarette access and smoking and drinking behaviours in teenagers. BMC public health, 15(1), p.244.
• Joly, B., Perriot, J., d’Athis, P., Chazard, E., Brousse, G. and Quantin, C., 2017. Success rates in smoking cessation: Psychological preparation plays a critical role and interacts with other factors such as psychoactive substances. PloS one, 12(10), p.e0184800.
• Khademalhosseini, Z., Ahmadi, J. and Khademalhosseini, M., 2015. Prevalence of smoking, and its relationship with depression, and anxiety in a sample of Iranian high school students. Enliven: Pharmacovigil Drug Saf, 1(1), p.005.
• Khayyati, F., Taymoori, P., Mohammadpoorasl, A., Allahverdipour, H. and Asghari Jafarabadi, M., 2016. Underlying predictors of tobacco smoking among Iranian teenagers: Generalized structural equation modeling. International Journal of Pediatrics, 4(9), pp.3461-3473.
• Omu, F.E., Bader, A.W., Helen, D., Slabeeb, S., Safar, H. and Omu, A.E., 2017. Teenagers’ awareness of peers’ substance and drug use in Kuwait. Journal of addictions nursing, 28(2), pp.55-62.
• Rozi, S., Mahmud, S., Lancaster, G. and Zahid, N., 2016. Peer pressure and family smoking habits influence smoking uptake in teenage boys attending school: multilevel modeling of survey data. Open Journal of Epidemiology, 6(3), p.167.
• Sheer, V.C. and Mao, C., 2018. Cigarette initiation among Chinese male teenagers in early smoking interactions. Health communication, 33(4), pp.392-400.
• Warner, K.E., 2017. Understanding the association between the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, adoption of tobacco control policies, and reduction in smoking prevalence. The Lancet Public Health, 2(4), pp.e158-e159.
• Xu, X., Chen, C., Abdullah, A.S., Liu, L., Sharma, M., Li, Y. and Zhao, Y., 2016. Smoking related attitudes, motives, and behaviors of male secondary school students in an urban setting of China. Springerplus, 5(1), p.2021.

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