School smoking bans reduce teen smoking

An international study of junior high- and high school-aged students who attended schools where smoking was banned were less likely to smoke than those where smoking was permitted, according to a study led by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Smoking bans also were found more effective in preventing students from smoking than just classroom-based tobacco education in the study, which did not include U.S. schools.

Researchers, led by Israel Agaku of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Center for Global Tobacco Control, compared data gathered from 2005 to 2011 on students, ages 13 to 15, in 43 nations. In countries with moderate-to-strongly enforced smoke-free-school policies, kids were 41% less likely to smoke than kids in countries with poorly enforced or no smoke-free-school policies.

Olubode Olufajo, research fellow in the School’ s Department of Epidemiology, was a co-author.

Read a Globe and Mail January 13, 2015 article about the study: Tobacco bans in school linked to lower smoking levels

Read the study in the European Journal of Public Health.

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