2/18/13
1/29/13
Lit review
Lit review on smoking
There is no such thing as a safe cigarette, as all of them are extremely deadly in the long run. Smoking is a troublesome and extremely bad habit, and many teens in singapore smoke. In 2010 alone, about 15 percent of Singaporean teens smoke. This review is going to focus on the factors that cause people to smoke.
Although a few websites has shown that smoking has a rather quiet past, SGH and NEA have put up web links on the increase of smoking dramatically in the past few years. It has been theorised by NEA that increase in teen smoking is mainly due to the fact that peer pressure has been high, and that many teens smoke because of their friends. Greenhaven press has published a book (1998 Teen smoking) that is detailed about the problems of smoking and mentions with a lot of elaborations that a lot of students and teens smoke due to the fact that television has made smoking so popular that many teens pick it up. Cigarette smoking is very clearly depicted in The Matrix and the Muppets, which are very popular shows and movies that children like to watch. After they watch it they think its “cool” to smoke.
According to livestrong.com and Family First Aid, when teens' family members smoke, teens are more likely to smoke. Parents and family members serve as role models to a teen, who is forming opinions about the world. When parents smoke, smoking can seem more permissible to the teen. For example, 98 percent of smokers have parents who also smoke, according to Family First Aid, suggesting a strong link between parental smoking and teen smoking.
Smoking is also advertised wrongly in many areas. Greenhaven (same book above) has written that product advertisement has been widely spread. For example, in the movie Men in Black 2, Marlboro paid to uncensor their products so that they can advertise their cigarettes, but when they open the fridge to get food, the brand labels are censored. Tobacco brands also often want teens to smoke, to take the place of older, more frail smokers. However, it also argues that it might not be the advertising that is the problem. They write that sometimes, anti-smoking ads may have failed. Many messages have an implicit meaning that smoking is what adults do, however not many adults smoke. Sometimes, the font and color of the font failed. There was a poster that said “Think. Don’t smoke.” However, the word “don’t” was filled with a different color, and it was hard to spot, so instead the viewer sees ‘Think smoke’, which explicitly means that you should think with smoking.
However, Margaret O’Hyde (1995) argues that majority of the smoker smoke due to the fact that many people start smoking in their teens due to the fact that peer pressure to smoke is extremely high in majority of the secondary schools/Jcs. A teenage mother in the USA was missing her old friends and life, and used cigarettes to calm down from the hustle and bustle of daily life.
In all, we have found many factors that have increased teen smoking, however, we find that many of the websites and books often mention peer pressure. The teens who are addicted to smoking are influenced by others.
Sources
Livestrong (Sep 2, 2010)
THE REASONS FOR TEENAGE SMOKING. Retrieved on 28-1-13 website:http://www.livestrong.com/article/214124-the-reasons-for-teenage-smoking/#ixzz2JGySp7t9
Singapore General Hospital (Getting teens to stub out) (4 Jun 2009) Retrieved 28-1-13 http://www.sgh.com.sg/about-us/newsroom/News-Articles-Reports/2009/Pages/Getting-teens-to-stub-out-The-Straits-Times,-Thu,-pg-10--20090604.aspx?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1
Tabacco Free Singapore (26 Feb 2011) Smoking in Singapore increasing especially amongst young.
Retrieved 28-1-13
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