Dimapur, June 5 (MExN): Parents should take heed of this: your young children studying in middle classes might be hooked onto tobacco and other related substances, and just because of peer pressure in their lives. The Don Bosco Youth and Educational Services (DBYES) has recently carried out a survey about tobacco-use among children and the results were startling - most of the young children tried tobacco when they were eleven or twelve years old and they learnt it from their friends.
The DBYES as part of their Kids off Tobacco’ programme, carried out survey on 2000 students, 1000 boys and 1000 girls from different schools in and around Dimapur, where questioned on tobacco and betel nut consumption, informed Fr John Pudussery SDB, Executive Director of DBYES.
The survey revealed that nearly twenty percent boys questioned confessed that they first tried tobacco when they were 11 years old whereas it was 21.8 percent for the girls. As for those who tried when they were 12 years old, the percentage for both boys and girls surveyed stands at 13.3.
In a clear case of peer pressure on the kids, on the question of how the young children experienced tobacco, the survey, revealed that 72.4 percent of boys and 56.6 percent of girls disclosed that they were introduced to the substance through their friends, the survey revealed. The percentage of other factors like brothers, sisters, relative parents and others remained marginally low.
Related to it, majority of the respondents said that usually they get their share of tobacco/betel nut products from their friends; the figure stands at 46 percent boys and 37 percent of girls. The percentage of other factors here also remains very low.
Surprisingly, the survey revealed that more than half of the respondents relied that they take tobacco and betel nut products although they know about its effects, 39 percent of boys and 43.5 percent of girls were ignorant of its bad effects whereas a low percentage of 6.7 percent of boys and 4.2 percent of girls said that they do not care at all about the ill-effects.
However, the most alarming thing of all is that 17.3 percent of boys and 8.5 percent of girls said that they cannot give up their habit of consuming tobacco and betel nut products. Whereas 7 percent boys and 10.1 percent girls replied that they don’t want to give up their habit. Though, 68.6 percent boys and 69.9 percent girls said that they want to.
However, Fr Pudussery, the DBYES Executive Director, said that those who wants to give up are those who have not tried giving it up at all, whereas those who said that they cannot give it up are those who tried but failed to do so.
Fr Pudussery said that they carried out the survey on the young children because the young tender age of a child is one of the most crucial periods in a person’s life and added that whatever they learn at that period gets firmly implanted in their minds and character making them difficult to get out of it.
Fr Pudussery said that it was a very dangerous sign given the fact about the ill-effects of tobacco and betel nut consumption. He said some even took 18 packets a day.
However, the main reason for inducing young children into consumption of tobacco and betel nut cannot be pin-pointed as such, though many people across the country blame it on the mass media which advertise tobacco and other related stuff. Some sections of the society in the country also blame it on celebrities who appear smoking or endorse cigarettes and other tobacco products, which ultimately influence young children.
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