Alarming rate of tobacco use by teens
Nearly one in five packs of cigarettes lit up by Canadian teen smokers are contraband products, with that figure even higher in Ontario and Quebec, says a new report from the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
The report, which appears in the CMAJ, says more than 25 per cent of adolescent smokers in Canada’s two largest provinces inhale illegal tobacco products.
“Although the use of illicit substances by adolescents is well known, the use of contraband cigarettes in this age group is striking,” writes report co-author Dr. Russell Callaghan of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto.
He added Canadian tobacco-control strategies need to address the issue.
“The widespread use of First Nations (and) native brand cigarettes, especially in Ontario and Quebec, presents a serious challenge to tobacco-control strategies, which attempt to use accessibility and price mechanisms to influence adolescents’ smoking behaviour.”
Almost 42,000 students in Grades 9 to 12 were considered in the report, which used data from the 2006/07 Youth Smoking Survey. In that demographic, the report said 5.2 per cent were daily smokers, with more than 13 per cent of that group claiming they used contraband cigarettes.
Students who were considered daily smokers and used contraband products also reported higher smoking rates over those who smokes legal brands.
Those who had access to contraband products smoked an average of 16.8 cigarettes a day, while those would paid the higher price for legal products smoked 11.9 cigarettes.
That figure was particularly alarming for the research director of the Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada.
“There are some worrying things . . . those youth who use contraband, tend to smoke more and I think this causes me to think there’s a fundamental problems with the way we’re doing things,” Neil Collishaw said. “We’ve tried to set up substantial controls on tobacco, but youths continue to smoke, whether it’s contraband or regular cigarettes.”
The area around Cornwall, Ont., about 100 kilometres southeast of Ottawa, has been a noted hot spot for tobacco smuggling.
At the end of August, Cornwall RCMP seized more than 700,000 contraband cigarettes in six separate incidents.
Police believe those cigarettes were smuggled into Canada from the United States.
Police say because of the temporary port of entry in Cornwall, which was set up in July, smugglers have been using the water to get illegal cigarettes across the border.
© Copyright (c) September 8, 2009 Canwest News Service
