Laws Don’t Stop Kids From Smoking, Swiss Study Finds
By Bruce Sylvester
June 2, 2006
The first line of this Health Behavior News Service story says it all:
Laws criminalizing the sale of tobacco to kids might be good PR for politicians, but they have little or no effect of the use of tobacco by minors, a Swiss researcher concludes in a new review article.
Governments pass the laws that probit minors from smoking but typically don’t enforce them. Even when enforced, the laws are easily circumvented.
The full review is to be published in the July issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine
Commentary
The most damning observation is that there is rarely, if ever, any effort made to assess the consequences of these tactics. This study, commissioned by the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health, is distinctly atypical.