Smoke

Many fashion magazines attract teens and tobacco industry targets these fashion magazines and advertises their products in them. "Anti-smoking groups say cigarette ads and promotional campaigns deliberately target youngsters under eighteen, the legal smoking age nationwide"(Worsnop, CQ Researcher). These magazines are considered "cool" and "popular" by teens, and they follow the fashion trends that are laid out by these magazines, which also include smoking. Therefore, banning tobacco advertising in magazines, and newspapers is important to reduce under age smoking.
             Another way to decrease under age smoking is by making cigarettes more expensive to buy. In 1996, 1.2 million people out of 1.8 millions were daily smokers under the age of eighteen (Ojeda, Opposing View Points). Raising the price of tobacco products through taxation is one of the fastest and most effective ways to discourage children and youths from starting to smoke and to encourage smokers to quit. A study published in the September 2000 issued of Preventive Medicine predicts that if cigarette taxes are raised by one dollar per pack, more than 2.3 million fewer Americans will die prematurely from smoking-related diseases in the next forty years and an increase of only twenty cents per pack would save over a million lives in the next four decades (Bork, Opposing View Points). Raising prices through taxation harms lower-income smokers. Therefore, more nonsmokers will choose not to start smoking and more smokers will choose to quit especially teenagers because of their low income. .
             Further reduction of under age smoking can be achieved by allowing the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco sales. "FDA is the only government agency that can provide comprehensive oversight of all aspects of tobacco product development and marketing, including companies' use of dangerous chemical additives [and] their nicotine manipulation"(Bork, Opposing View Points).