Smoke-Free Restaurant Laws Help Curb Teen Smoking

What This Means to You

Many states and towns have restricted or banned smoking in public places because it's bad for everyone’s health. Secondhand smoke is harmful for children and increases the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), asthma, ear infections, bronchitis or pneumonia. Non-smokers exposed to second-hand smoke are also at increased risk of developing cancer and heart disease. If smoking is still allowed in restaurants in your area, find out which ones have no-smoking policies and enjoy your family meals at those establishments instead.

Always insist on smoke-free policies wherever your kids go — school, day care, restaurants, jobs, even relatives' and friends' homes. That's because secondhand smoke contains 250-plus harmful chemicals and more than 50 are carcinogenic (cancer-causing), from arsenic ammonia to hydrogen cyanide. What's worse: Concentrations of many of these chemicals are higher in secondhand smoke than in the smoke inhaled by smokers.

But it's crucial to make your home a no-smoking zone, too. If you smoke and have (or are expecting) a child, quitting is the only way to significantly reduce exposure to hazardous tobacco chemicals.

Parents who continue to smoke — or let anyone else smoke — around their kids are in effect allowing their children to smoke, too. That's because when kids are around someone who's smoking, they're breathing in both the smoke that's being exhaled (called mainstream smoke) and the smoke coming from the end of a burning cigarette, cigar, or pipe (called sidestream smoke).

To help discourage your kids from ever being tempted to take a puff:

• Establish firm rules — and consequences — when it comes to using tobacco.
• Explain that it's against the law for kids to buy tobacco products.
• Emphasize that although occasionally smoking while hanging out may seem like no big deal, people can become hooked within days of a first encounter with the nicotine in tobacco.
• Talk about the long-term health consequences of smoking, including lung problems, cancer, and heart disease.
• Tell them about the immediate consequences of smoking, such as bad breath, shortness of breath, and decreased athletic performance.

But don't wait to talk about the dangers of tobacco until the peer pressure of adolescence kicks in. Start the discussions early on and continue the no-smoking message throughout childhood and well into the teen years.

Reviewed by: Mary L. Gavin, MD Date reviewed: May 2008

Source: "Local Restaurant Smoking Regulations and the Adolescent Smoking Initiation Process: Results of a Multilevel Contextual Analysis Among Massachusetts Youth," Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, May 2008.