Use of existing data to dvlp new tobacco control strategies
Creators: name: University Of California Office Of The President
Publisher: name: University of California Office of the President
publisherIdentifier: https://ror.org/00dmfq477
publisherIdentifierScheme: ROR
Year: 2024

description: To improve the outlook for a healthy population, the public health community continues to develop interventions aimed at encouraging smokers to quit, discouraging nonsmokers (mainly adolescents) from starting, and protecting nonsmokers from secondhand tobacco smoke. To refine tobacco control strategies and develop new ones, information concerning the effectiveness of past and ongoing policies is required. Further research into the nature of the smoking uptake and cessation processes would inform prevention efforts, and understanding pro-tobacco influences is also necessary in order to design effective counter measures. These are all important TRDRP research priorities.
 
 
 
 
 
 Building on our past 12 years of research analyzing multiple large population datasets, in this continuation grant we plan to initiate a number of new projects. An important new theme of the proposed research is understanding young adult smoking behavior. This group is now particularly targeted by the tobacco industry. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Tobacco control policy evaluation. Increasing cigarette excise taxes is an important tobacco control policy, but the tobacco industry also raises cigarette prices. It may devote some of the increased revenue to promotional offers that actually reduces the amount consumers pay for cigarettes. We will document the extent of this practice. We plan extensive analyses of population anti-tobacco norms in California and will compare trends in California to those the rest of the nation. School no-smoking policies and the perceived ease of getting cigarettes among adolescents will also be examined with respect to adolescent smoking. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Adolescent smoking. We will complete our work on further defining our measure of susceptibility to smoking, better define the age range when young committed never smokers become susceptible to smoking and when, if they do not progress to smoking, again become committed not to smoke, determine whether the duration of the smoking uptake process is related to the degree of future addiction, and continue to characterize the effect of tobacco advertising and promotions on adolescent smoking.
 
 
 
 
 
 Young adults smoking. We expect to learn a great deal about the smoking patterns of young adults. If a substantial percentage of young adults think they can safely smoke only in social situations and thereby avoid addiction, tobacco control efforts may be required to counter this impression, as inevitably some will succumb to addiction. We also will document the extent of young adults exposure to tobacco industry promotional activities in bars/clubs and attempt to segment the young adult population, as the tobacco industry does, to see if there are distinct groups that might be more likely to respond to different tobacco control counter measures. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Smoking cessation. There is much discussion about the use of nicotine replacement products as harm-reduction alternatives to cigarettes, but there is little evidence that promoting such product use will be successful in getting smokers to switch to these products from cigarettes. Our analyses will provide insight into the extent to which smokers are already using these products to cut down on the amount they smoke or as a nicotine substitute in situations where smoking is not allowed. In order to evaluate the impact of tobacco control efforts on adult smoking prevalence, we must understand why large increases in reported quitting are not translating into lower smoking prevalence. Extensive analyses are planned to gain insight into this conundrum.