Internet 'battleground' for smoking messages:professor

Ilya Gridneff - Herald Sun - Australia

September 27, 2007 01:50pm

The Internet is "the battleground for the lungs of our children" as tobacco companies run clandestine advertising campaigns, a professor says.

Leading health professional Professor Simon Chapman, said achievements made with anti-smoking campaigns in traditional forums could be made irrelevant by new media.

He was speaking today at the Healthy Futures For Young People symposium at Sydney University.

"What we are really worried about is the new media - YouTube, Myspace, Facebook - places like this, which are running riot with many pro-smoking messages which look like they have the fingerprints of tobacco companies all over them," Prof Chapman said later.

"The tobacco companies will, of course, deny that they are doing it.

"But if you look at the production values which are going into some of these films they are way beyond anything that could be recorded on mobile phone camera."

The Sydney anti-smoking campaigner said there was a proliferation of soft-porn style clips using scantily clad women championing the pleasures of smoking, as well other such strategies freely available on the net.

"Regulating the web is the sort of North Korean approach, but what we can do is make it a battleground. And there are a lot of very creative efforts getting out there," Prof Chapman said.

"It (the internet) is really changing the way those in tobacco control have to think about the battleground for the lungs of our children in the future," he said.

Despite these concerns, smoking levels in Australia's youth were the lowest they had ever been, Prof Chapman said.

He said resources must be invested into new media strategies to counter pro-smoking messages via the internet.

Already, kids were downloading anti-smoking clips as well as the pro-smoking messages, he said.

Doctor Susan Towns, from Sydney's Westmead Hospital, told the conference most smokers started the habit as an adolescent.

"Six per cent start when they are 12 but we do know 17 per cent of 17 year-olds are smoking," Dr Towns said.

"Nine out of 10 smokers start in their teenage years and, of course, the earlier you start the more likely you are to have complications."

Today's symposium, attended by leading health experts, launched the first university-funded unit for adolescent medicine, based at Westmead.

The unit will coordinate, promote and focus on the range of health issues affecting young Australians, including sexually transmitted disease, drug and alcohol-related illness, depression and obesity.

Professor David Bennett said the unit was set up to reduce the incidence of chronic illness in 15 to 20 per cent of adolescents.

"Young people fall through the gaps, there is investment in younger children ... and in adults but we actually need to redress the imbalances there," Prof Barnett said.

He said more than 75 per cent of deaths among Australian adolescents were preventable.


Email Professor Simon Chapman: sc@med.usyd.edu.au

Story source link: http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22491655-662,00.html

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