Quitting in School Communities
Teachers and other School Staff
Many workplaces provide support and encouragement to their staff to quit smoking because of the many flow on benefits to the business and to the staff members themselves. In this regard schools are no different to other organisations.
Offering support to teachers and other staff to quit smoking can have multiple benefits and demonstrated that schools are good employers. (e.g. funding a visit to the teacher's GP to discuss quitting)
However helping teachers to quit smoking has additional community benefit as they are important role models to their students.
The Smokefree Schools Group recommends:
that schools support and encourage their staff to quit. This can be done by:
- offering staff support and incentives to quit smoking
- promoting quit smoking services
- inviting local quit coaches to visit schools to present on their services
- running quit groups for members of the school community to quit together.
Parents
New Zealand research shows students who had at least one parent who smoked were three times more likely to be daily smokers, compared with those whose parents did not smoke. Although schools cannot tell parents to quit, they can provide positive messages to support and encourage parents to take action.
The Smokefree Schools Group recommends:
that schools promote quitting and quitting services to parents by:
- including information on quitting services in school newsletters and at school meetings etc
- inviting local quit coaches to be present at school events
Students
Smoking is an addiction which nearly always begins whilst people are still in school. The average age of a new smoker is just 14 years of age. The younger people start smoking the harder it is to quit and the worse the health outcomes.
As the organisations with the greatest amount of contact with young people schools can help break the cycle of smoking.
Despite perceptions to the contrary, the vast majority of young people who smoke regret starting. Nearly three quarters (72 percent) of 15 to 19-year-old smokers say they wish they'd never started to smoke.
Young people are also more interested in quitting than people realise. Nearly half of smokers aged 15 to 19 are thinking of quitting and over a third have made at least one attempt to quit in the last year.
However just as is the case with adult smoking, young people who smoke may be addicted to a potent drug (nicotine). Research shows that young people can rapidly become addicted to nicotine, with symptoms of nicotine dependence emerging long before regular smoking. Once cravings are experienced the likelihood of becoming daily smokers is greatly increased.
Helping young people to quit is not the same as helping adults to quit and quitting programmes and medications for adults may be less effective with young people.
According to the New Zealand Smoking Cessation Guidelines:
There is insufficient evidence to confirm the effectiveness of interventions specifically aimed at helping young people stop smoking, or to recommend that any particular models be integrated into standard practice. There is also insufficient evidence to confirm the effectiveness of NRT in young people who want to stop smoking. However, given that NRT is less harmful than smoking, safety concerns should not be a barrier to use.
Expert opinion is that NRT may be considered for use in nicotine dependent adolescents who want to stop smoking. Given the lack of clear evidence on specific interventions for young people, it is recommended that interventions be used that are effective in helping adults – this means interventions that use multisession support.
The Smokefree Schools Group (in line with the New Zealand Smoking Cessation Guidelines) recommends:
that schools help young people to quit by:
- developing a comprehensive approach to address smoking
- treating smoking by students as a health rather than a disciplinary issue
- offering smoking cessation interventions that incorporate known effective components to young people who smoke
- creating a physical and social environment in the school where smoking is not the norm
- considering providing on-site quit support. Some schools have registered healthcare professionals.They can become Quitcard (NRT) providers.
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