Behind The Spin: Cooling the flame: Why teenage girls still smoke

For years governments have been producing campaign after campaign to dissuade us from smoking. They have shown us the victims of lung cancer on their death beds; our own insides as a result of smoking; bombarded the public through every part of the media and have brought the debate to almost every home in the UK, writes Alex Pullin (left).

Naomi King, director of anti-smoking group ASH in Wales told the Western Mail: “The effects of passive smoking could be lessened by having a ban on smoking in public places and would also make smoking less acceptable which would have an impact on the smoking rate among children.” The campaigners for a public smoking ban seem to be getting heard in Westminster. Tony Blair appears to be considering a ban in public places once the prohibition of smoking in pubs has been finalised.

And yet none of this seems to make a blind bit of difference to teenagers. A survey released by Leeds University in September 2004 revealed that one in three girls in secondary school smokes – twice as many as boys their own age. So why are these campaigns failing to reach their target? Can anything succeed or are teenage girls just perverse?

The British picture reflects a similar trend in Europe. In Austria 33 per cent of teenage girls smoke, rising to 60 per cent in Portugal.

The Department of Health has, once again, gone for shock tactics, this time in association with the British Heart Foundation. Their latest offering shows a blood clot just visible under the skin of a smoker to the sound of Frank Sinatra’s hit ‘I Got You Under My Skin’. Just in time for the festive season. Lovely.

It has also been suggested that in the near future smokers will be greeted by the sight of cancer tumours, rancid lungs and the like on the front of their fag packets. But after the recent spate of television advertising in a similar vein (apologies) is anyone actually going to be that shocked?

After all when you can watch a man cough up a dog in a commercial for mints and ‘celebrity surgeries live’ on Channel Five what will another gross-out campaign do? Especially among teenagers for whom the grotesque is more likely to fascinate than repulse.

What will be next ? Schoolchildren in assemblies handed chunks of phlegm to best demonstrate to them what they would be coughing in the morning if they had smoked for over ten years?

If they could get away with psychologically damaging a generation like that then would they do it?

So how can the anti-smoking campaigns cut through what makes smoking cool to teenage girls? One study undertaken in America suggests that girls are more likely to smoke because they think it will make them thinner, more attractive and fashionable.

This is seemingly backed up by celebrity skinny minnies such as Kate Moss and Sex and the City’s Sarah Jessica Parker who are often seen chuffing on a fag.

Compare this to the role models for teenage boys. These are mainly fit and healthy sports stars who are unlikely to smoke. Even music superstars are more likely to be seen with a cigar than a cigarette. (But see Chris Duffield’s article on male health behaviour on pp )

The anti-smoking body ASH also believes that since cigarette advertising has been banned, glossy celebrity magazine images of Britney Spears, Nicole Kidman and others have become more influential. Teenage girls are also far more likely to be exposed to those magazines.

In 2004 nearly 2,800 British and Canadian schoolgirls were polled and the results published in the Postgraduate Medical Journal. The findings linked girls who were concerned with their weight and those who took up smoking.

‘Anxieties about body weight and shape regulation, the feeling of being too fat, and the fear of losing control of eating, may be important forces at work in sustaining cigarette smoking amongst teenage girls.’ the report tells us.

However Dr Helen Sweeting, of Glasgow University believes that it is the different use of spare time that separates boys from girls and determines whether they are likely to smoke.

She told the Mirror in 2004: “Until the last decades of the 20th century, the leisure time of teenage girls was more likely to revolve around their homes or the shops while boys were more likely to go out. Reduced constraints on female behaviour have resulted in greater social freedom…Girls used to stay indoors and read magazines like Jackie. But now it’s the boys who are staying in.”

If this is true, Edward Bernays’s notorious ‘torches of freedom’ concept, where he persuaded women that smoking was a symbol of their independence, still rings true for teenage girls. But are these the torches of freedom or the torches of sensuality? Teen icons have fostered an atmosphere where smoking is a badge of chic independence.
In films cigarettes are often used in sexual imagery from Uma Thurman dragging seductively on a cigarette in Pulp Fiction to ‘that scene’ in Basic Instinct to high school musical Grease.

Amanda Sandford, research manager for ASH, suggests that this all links to the fact that girls mature quicker. “It is a reflection of the pressures on teenage girls. One of the reasons is that girls mature much earlier and go out with older boys who may smoke,” she told the Evening Standard.

Teenage girls mature more quickly than boys and therefore will appear more perverse and bloody-minded before the boys. Girls also hang around in large groups who egg each other on.

One of the biggest obstacles for the anti-smoking campaigner is that for most adolescent smokers their future past their A levels seems distant and irrelevant. How are teenagers expected to concern themselves over long-term health issues when even next month seems so far away? This reasoning seems to be the simplest explanation for why teenagers ignore the health warnings and continue to light up.

For campaign makers and health educators, adolescent thought processes present a rather vague and difficult target. What constitutes cool? How can we make tobacco uncool?

If we look at the American and the Canadian markets they have experienced a few successes in persuading teenagers to cut back. This is through aggressive TV and Radio campaigns pitched exclusively at teens, coupled with a lot of effort, a lot of community investment and a lot of activities such as ‘smoke free’ class competitions in local high schools.

Advertising appears to work with teenagers. One multimillion-dollar campaign in Florida lowered smoking among high-school students by 24 percent. It was backed by the sunshine state’s $11.3 billion tobacco settlement. The campaign was so successful it was included in a ‘teacher net’, an internet site for high school teachers in the state.

“Our interpretation of this data can be summed up in one word. Wow!” says Bob Brooks, secretary of the Florida Department of Health on the website. “Clearly our youth are getting the message: smoking is not cool.” Other hard line anti-smoking campaigns, funded with cash by different states’ settlements with the tobacco industry have also met with similar successes all over America.

The most successful tool for teenage girls appears to be the notion of ‘smoke free classes’. This is particularly effective amongst the girls as it plays on the idea of peer pressure – something which girls appear more susceptible to. The winning class wins a prize and so there is a feeling of letting the group down if you light up.

However the campaigns are costly and when budgetary cuts have to be made the good work is quickly undone. But anti-tobacco campaigners say the results speak for themselves and they just need constant funding.

In 2003 the British government spent £31 million on general anti-smoking campaigns. And yet they are surprised to be still missing the mark.

For researchers, saying smoking is cool expresses a range of different influences that must be described and studied in finer detail.

However due to the famously surly nature of teenagers a total ban in public places may even glamorise smoking and re-enforce the thrill of the unlawful activity.

Anyway we shouldn’t really be panicking. Back in 2000 readers of the Mail on Sunday were reassured by this story: ‘Mobile phones stop teenage girls from smoking, according to researchers’. Girls, they say, would rather spend money on mobiles than on cigarettes. So that’s OK then, as long as there aren’t any health risks with mobile phones… Erm.