Anti-smoking drive a fizzer

WASHINGTON - Trying to teach schoolchildren that they should not smoke does not work, say researchers who last week reported the failure of a 15-year anti-smoking programme in the United States.

The researchers tried to persuade children, starting at the age of 9, not to smoke.

They helped them to practise saying no to cigarettes, bombarded them with information on how dangerous and addictive smoking is, and even had students re-enact tobacco lawsuit trials.

But about a quarter who completed the programme smoked by the time they were 18 - the same percentage as elsewhere.

Arthur Peterson and colleagues at the Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Centre in Seattle, who published their study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, called the results disappointing and said they showed that experts really did not know what made teens smoke.

But activists urged educators and health officials not to give up. Matt Myers, of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said: "There is substantial evidence that shows that school-based programmes, as part of a broader, comprehensive effort in both the schools and the communities, can have a major difference in the number of kids who smoke."

Mr Myers said this meant involving boys' and girls' clubs, churches and sports teams.

He said his group was especially worried because tobacco firms were touting school-based programmes as part of lawsuit settlements with states that have sued them.

"The first thing I'd have the tobacco industry do is stop marketing to our kids."

Government statistics show that smoking kills about 400,000 people a year in the US. It is the main cause of lung cancer and causes heart disease and emphysema.

The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention reported in October that 24 per cent of adults 18 and older smoked in 1998.

Experts have long suggested that school and community programmes could bring down smoking rates, so the researchers set up the Hutchison Smoking Prevention Project, which ran from September 1984 to August last year.

Forty school districts took part, half of which ran the programme. It started with third-graders, aged 9 or 10, and finished when the students completed 12th grade at 17 or 18.

They received an average of more than 46 hours of instruction, role-playing and other "interventions." But at the end of the study, 24.7 per cent of girls and 26.7 per cent of boys smoked daily in 12th grade.

* In New Zealand, Ministry of Health figures show that 4700 people a year die of smoking-related illnesses. Smoking accounted for 17 per cent of all deaths in 1996. Among Maori, a third of all deaths between 1989 and 1993 were attributable to smoking.

- REUTERS