De-Marketing Tobacco and Alcohol - Why Prevention Efforts Should Target Young Children

De-Marketing Tobacco and Alcohol

  Programs to prevent underage teenagers from unhealthy use of alcohol and tobacco have typically focused on proximal (i.e., immediate) factors related to the likelihood of experimentation by teenagers. By teenagers" own reports, these proximal causes are peer pressure, availability in the household, and availability from retailers. In contrast, this paper explores the potential of prevention efforts focusing on temporally distal (i.e., much earlier) factors relating to use initiation. This perspective has received relatively little attention since teenagers themselves probably do not understand how their beliefs and attitudes were influenced at younger ages.