Smoking does not admit to easy solutions but massively impinges on health outcomes.
Noel Pearson proposes the following strategy to tackle smoking. [b]It would be a strategy that would be worthwhile to trial in the upper Kedron Brook valley community. Individual case management and comprehensive targeting of community members is theoretically possible in this well-defined community. [/b]
The approach is 7-pronged:
1. We need a comprehensive strategy to prevent the taking up of smoking by people under 18. If individuals can avoid experimenting and becoming addicted to smoking in the danger period between primary school and their teenage years then the chances of taking up smoking later in their adulthood is very much reduced.
2. We need a comprehensive strategy to prevent the taking up of smoking or encourage the quitting of smoking among mothers-to-be and for the abstention and quitting of smoking among pregnant women.
3. We need a comprehensive strategy to stop smokers from affecting the health of children. This includes parents and relatives. It means we have to change what happens in public places in private homes and in motor vehicles.
4. We need a comprehensive strategy to stop smokers from affecting other people.
5. We want existing smokers to support the first four strategies. Even though they may be struggling with their own addiction to tobacco they can nevertheless support efforts aimed at ensuring other community members particularly the younger generations maintain good health.
6. We want existing smokers to quit smoking for their own sake.
We support smokers who have not thought about quitting to start thinking about quitting.
We support smokers who have been thinking about quitting but have not made a serious attempt to take the plunge and do so.
We support smokers who have been trying to quit to keep doing so. Research says it takes on average 5 tries to succeed.
7. A program of financial incentives for young people between 12 and 21 to abstain from smoking.