Smokefree campaign rolls on

A campaign to stub out cigarettes for good is moving into homes, schools, marae and clubs.

The five-year Living Smokefree strategy was launched yesterday by Counties Manukau District Health Board.

Programme manager Ingrid Minett says the aim is to break the cycle of smoking by targeting key groups, role models and life events.

Schools will be an important focus for preventing children from smoking and getting teenagers to quit.

Ms Minett says children from households with smokers are three times more likely to take up the habit.

The campaign hopes to counter that role-modelling of smoking by working with school leaders students look up to.

Ms Minett claims the tobacco industry is putting a lot of money into recruiting children to smoke and census figures show it’s succeeding.

Nearly one in 10 Counties Manukau year 10 students are daily smokers and 14 percent smoke monthly.

The highest number of smokers is in the 20 to 24 age group.

That means people are getting the respiratory disease emphysema at a younger age, Ms Minett says. She’s seen 18-year-olds who can’t play sport because of years of smoking.

To try to prevent more young people taking up the habit, Living Smokefree is putting a worker into schools fulltime.

Smoking is estimated to cost Counties Manukau more than $200 million a year from death, illness, disability and loss of income.

About one in five people in the area smokes, higher than the national average.

Half of the district’s Maori women smoke and Ms Minett says getting them to quit will require innovative approaches to Maori leadership. That aspect of Living Smokefree will focus on settings such as sports and social clubs and marae.

A health scare and pregnancy are among the events that can prompt people to want to stop smoking.

Ms Minett says to take advantage of those moments, Living Smokefree will have a worker based at Kidz First Hospital and a counsellor at the Manukau SuperClinic.

Nicotine replacement therapy will also be available for $5 a month.

The Living Smokefree campaign also aims to work with other agencies on public education about the importance of smokefree environments.

- © Fairfax NZ News