Impact of policies and governmental strategies from 2005- 2021 to prevent smoking prevalence among teenagers in the UK

 Impact of policies and governmental strategies from 2005- 2021 to prevent smoking prevalence among teenagers in the UK

The UK government has implemented several policies and strategies from 2005to 2021 to prevent smoking prevalence among teenagers and others. The interventions are focussed among all age groups in equal manner to avoid promotion of early smoking. The study by Bauld et al. (2016) aimed to determine the impact of NHS Stop Smoking Services for one year. The prospective study included 3057 individuals who are teenagers and adults from nine areas in the England those initiated to quit smoking from March 2012-2013 through the NHS Stop Smoking Services. The results informed that 7.7% of the participants expressed lower carbon monoxide validity at the end of 52 weeks indicating they effectively responded to the smoking cessation services to lower the worsened impact of smoking habit. The participants in the program was seen to show increased smoking cessation who were provided group support compared to one-to-one in cessation of smoking. In the study, it was that 1 in 13 people who set a cessation data through the program achieved it by the end of the year. The results further inform that 18,000 deaths among teenagers and adult smokers could be avoided with the use and implementation of the program within the year. However, varied impact was seen among different participants. The limitation faced in the study is that it is observation study due to which the confounder remained unmeasured and causality was maintained non-cautiously.

In the UK, smoking-free in public places is one of the key policies introduced in England in 2007 (smokefreeengland.co.uk, 2007). The impact of the legislation on smoking reduction among teenagers in school environment is determined by the study of Katikireddi et al. (2016). The study mentioned that on implementing Smoke-free legislation in the public places in the UK, 4.3% reduction in regular smoking prevalence among the teenage girls is seen. Moreover, 1.5% reduction per annum in the regular smoking prevalence among the teenagers is seen with the implementation of the legislation. Among 13 years of age teenage girls, the implementation of the legislation created 2.8% reduction in regular smoking. However, non-significant reduction in the smoking prevalence among the teenage boys is seen with the implementation of legislation. The study to gather the results used the method of survey in gathering information about regular smoking among teenagers from 13-15 years of age in the UK. The limitation faced in the study is that it does allow to determine the causality between changes in smoking habits of teenagers and smoke-free legislation and it only present demonstration of association between the two variables. The other limitation is that long-term impact of the legislation is not evaluated.

In the UK, through the Tobacco Control Policy, the legal age of smoking was increased to 18 years from 16 years between 2006 and 2008 (gov.uk, 2017). The study by Anyanwu et al. (2020) aimed to identify the impact of Tobacco control policy in the UK on cessation of smoking among the teenagers. For this purpose, the study included 14,992 people who were 11-15 years and 74, 960 person-years of longitudinal data of them were studied. The results revealed that the implementation of the policy led to reduce smoking initiation among teenagers (change in legal age odds ratio [OR]: 0.67; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.55 to 0.81; smoke-free legislation OR: 0.68; 95% CI: 0.56 to 0.82) along with narrowing down of socio-economic inequalities that promoted teenage smoking was also to be achieved. The change in the legal age led to change of smoking habit to occasional from regular among many individuals along with reduction smoking cessation was seen. The limitation faced in the study is that potential mechanism was not implemented how the smoking cessation among teenager vary with different implementation of tobacco control policy.

Chapter 4: Conclusion and Recommendations

Introduction

In this chapter, the ideas presented all over the topic are to be summarised and presented with a strong final analysis. The chapter is going to restate the problem and reason behind been it to be explored. Moreover, arguments and findings presented in the study also to be summarised in this chapter.

Summary of Findings

The summarisation of findings indicates that each of the themes framed effectively presented data that meet all the objectives in the study. This is evident as the first theme mentioned prevalence of smoking among teenagers in the UK. In explaining the information two key articles Laverty et al. (2019) and Hopkinson et al. (2014) were used and a government report was analysed to present further detailed data. The findings from the studies by Laverty et al. (2019) and Hopkinson et al. (2014) indicated that whi