Youth smoking declines in state
ALBANY — A soon-to-be-released report on smoking in New York will say the number of high school students smoking cigarettes has declined 2.4 percentage points since 2005.
The state Health Department reported in 2005 that about 16.2 percent of high school students statewide smoked cigarettes. In 2007, that dropped to less than 13.8 percent, compared with 20 percent nationwide, according to excerpts from the Health Department’s new report obtained by the Associated Press.
“New York’s youth are using tobacco at a lower rate than youth in most other states, and [the state] is currently ranked fifth lowest in youth who use tobacco,” said Karmen Hanson, a policy analyst for the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Russ Sciandra, director of the Center for a Tobacco Free New York, attributes the improvement to the state’s various programs and advertisements to discourage tobacco use.
“I talk to people all over the country and everybody says New York has the best tobacco prevention program in the country,” Sciandra said.
The 2007 data will be presented to the Tobacco Control Advisory Board on Thursday.
The “youth risk behavior” survey gathered information from 13,439 youths between February and May 2007. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 1.6 percent.
The report also found that 60 percent of New Yorkers had tried to quit smoking at least once in the past year, compared with 54.1 percent in 2006 and 39.7 percent nationwide.
New Yorkers were also more likely to say they would attempt to quit smoking in the next 30 days — with 37.6 percent of New Yorkers answering they would give it a try, compared with 21.5 percent nationwide.
The quitting data was collected in surveys between January and December 2007 involving 7,769 people. The margin of error was plus or minus 1.4 percent.
