Helping adolescent smokers quit: can telephone quitlines lead the way?
The numbers remain staggering and unacceptable, but the sad reality in the United States is that each day " approximately 3,600 young people between the ages of 12 and 17 years initiate cigarette smoking, and an estimated 1,100 young people become daily cigarette smokers " (1) We know that many of these children will become addicted and that many will eventually die of tobacco caused cancer or other disease. And given these tobacco caused deaths, tobacco companies have long recognized that young smokers are a key to their future because the population of smokers must be replenished as others die or quit. Or, as stated in a proposed tobacco company marketing plan, " As this 14 24 age group matures, they will account for a key share of the total cigarette volume for at least the next 25 years. " (2) These sobering facts lead to the obvious question: What do we know about preventing and treating tobacco use in the youngest populations, before it is truly ingrained into a lifestyle? Much attention and funding are directed at tobacco use prevention, and prevention programs are common in schools and communities. But research and programs for treating adolescent tobacco use are far less common and we know little about denying tobacco companies a new population of addicts. So when a game changing study provides new hope for how tobacco using youth can be treated, the collective " ears " of the public health community should perk to attention. The report by Peterson et al. (3) in this issue, along with its accompanying methodological piece by Kealey et al. (4) is such a study. Dozens of studies have investigated both behavioral and pharmacological interventions to help youth quit smoking, but as Peterson et al. (3) point out, " to our knowledge, no randomized trial in adolescent smoking cessation has found a statistically sig nifi cant intervention effect on prolonged (6 months or more) cessation. " Until now. In the study by Peterson et al. 50 high schools were randomly assigned to receive either an experimental (25 schools) or control smoking cessation treatment (25 schools) in which the experimental treatment was proactive telephone based counseling that used Motivational Interviewing and Cognitive Behavioral Skills Training. At the end of 6 months of treatment, daily smokers who are most likely already addicted to tobacco were more likely to be abstinent than those in the control condition.
Journal of the National Cancer Institute