FITeens Toolkit

65 Tobacco consumption among adolescents remains a major public health problem globally . It is estimated that tobacco consumption in any form kills up to half of its users, and that tobacco use kills more than 8 million people each year (WHO, 2020). Although young people are aware of tobacco use as being a leading cause of death, many of them still use tobacco products. According to the recent WHO Report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic, there were 1.07 billion smokers aged 15 years and above, and 24 million children aged 13 – 15 smoked globally (WHO, 2019). It has been found that almost 90% of current adults who smoke cigarettes daily, tried smoking first before the age of 18 (Ranabhat et al., 2019), thus making adolescence a critical period for ending the tobacco epidemic. Tobacco use increases the risk for contracting a variety of diseases and health conditions , including lung, bladder, colorectal, esophageal, kidney, larynx, mouth, throat and other cancers, respiratory infections, diabetes, and coronary heart disease (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010). Passive smoking or “secondhand smoke” also increases the risk for many diseases. For example, exposure to environmental tobacco smoke among non-smokers increases lung cancer risk by about 20 percent. In addition, exposure to tobacco smoke in the home is a risk factor for asthma in children (Jacobs et al., 2013). According to Martins-Green et al. (2014), smoking also leaves chemical residue on surfaces in rooms where smoking has taken place, which can persist long after the smoke itself has disappeared from the room, a phenomenon known as "thirdhand smoke". This has been increasingly recognized as a potential