Parents Stopping Smoking Delivers Lowered Smoking Rates For Generations To Come

Educating people about the health risks of smoking causes large and ongoing reductions in population smoking rates a new modelling study suggests.

US scientist Dr Carl V Phillips and Dr Marewa Glover of a New Zealand based research Centre modelled the decline in smoking rates in the US following the release of the 1964 US Surgeon General’s report ‘Smoking Kills’. The report triggered a decade of mass education about the substantial risks to health caused by smoking.

Published in the current issue of the American Journal of Health Behaviour, the study ‘How much ongoing smoking reduction is echoes of the initial mass education’ proposes that parents during 1965-1975, who stopped smoking, influenced lower uptake of smoking among their children.

Parental smoking is an established strong predictor of smoking uptake in children.

The inter-generational effect of less parents smoking, generation after generation, accounted for about one-third of the decline in smoking that occurred in the US between 1978 and 2010.

In a second simulation, the researchers added in the effect of having an influential peer stop smoking. It is well established that smoking cessation is a contagious behavior. The combined effect of a peer stopping smoking and lower parental smoking accounted for more than one-half of the observed decline in smoking prevalence.

A third simulation, adding other ways lower population smoking rates discourage smoking uptake and encourages quitting enabled the researchers to account for the total decline in smoking.

“This means that, at best, all other tobacco control interventions, after the initial education shock, are left competing for credit for a minority of the total reduction. But instead, evaluations commonly claim that every tobacco control intervention has had a substantial impact,” said Dr Phillips.

“Given that smoking remains common in many places that have implemented many interventions, it is clear that the common claims of success must be wrong, in part or entirely.”

The researchers concluded that, where a population lacks understanding of the risks equivalent to Americans in 1975, the most effective anti-smoking measure would be to provide them with accurate information about the harms of smoking.

“The only other anti-smoking intervention that comes close to being as effective, is encouraging people who smoke to switch to a low-risk alternative,” Dr Phillips said.

Background Notes for Editors:

1. Dr. Carl Phillips has a corpus of past work challenging poor science, including critiquing anti-smoking research. During the course of his career, CVP has received research grants, salary, or consulting fees from almost everyone with a financial interest in the sale of tobacco products, including national and state/provincial governments of the U.S. and Canada, manufacturers of cigarettes, vaping, snus, and other tobacco products, pharmaceutical companies, and insurance companies, as well as advocacy organizations attempting to eliminate use of these products, advocacy organizations attempting to defend consumers’ rights to choose these products, and publishers who focus on these products. His only such funding during his work on this project came from the grant awarded to the Centre of Research Excellence: Indigenous Sovereignty & Smoking.
2. Dr Glover is one of New Zealand’s leading tobacco control researchers. She has worked on reducing smoking-related harm for 30 years. She is recognized internationally for her advocacy on tobacco harm reduction. Dr. Glover has chaired numerous committees and organizations including End Smoking NZ, an independent NGO that lobbied for a harm reduction approach even before electronic cigarettes were introduced. Dr Glover is the most prominent public commentator on vaping in NZ. She is regularly called by the media and has appeared on NZ’s 60 Minutes in addition to participating in live online and conference debates about vaping. In 2018 Dr Glover established the Centre of Research Excellence: Indigenous Sovereignty & Smoking.
3. Centre of Research Excellence: Indigenous Sovereignty and Smoking is an international programme of research aimed at reducing tobacco related harms among Indigenous peoples globally. www.coreiss.com
4. This study was conducted as part of a wider programme of research being undertaken by the Centre of Research Excellence: Indigenous Sovereignty & Smoking. The funding for that program of work was obtained following submission of a researcher-initiated application for a funding grant from the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, Inc. (“FSFW”), a US non-profit 501(c)(3) private foundation. This study is, under the terms of the grant agreement with FSFW, editorially independent of FSFW. The contents, selection and presentation of facts, as well as any opinions expressed herein, are the sole responsibility of the authors and under no circumstances should they be regarded as reflecting the positions of FSFW. A full conflict of interest disclosure statement is available online at https://coreiss.com/disclaimer

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