Survey: Youth smoking at all-time recorded low at 15.7 percent

In 2005, 23 percent of young people smoked cigarettes.

“We’ve been seeing the youth smoking rate decline the last couple years, so this does not come as a shock,” said Shelia Evans, community health program manager at IU Health Bloomington Hospital.

Evans said smoke-free laws, smoking prevention programs, and state and federal cigarette taxes are all playing a role in reducing the number of new young smokers.

“Research shows that increasing the cigarette tax does reduce tobacco usage among teens, because they often don’t have a lot of money to spend,” she said. “Indiana has about a dollar per pack tax, and the federal tax adds another dollar on top of that.”

Evans, who teaches tobacco use prevention to third graders in the Monroe County Community School Corp. and Richland-Bean Blossom Community School Corp., said more educators are realizing that rather than stressing the health risks of smoking to young people, it’s more effective to talk about how the tobacco industry is spending billions of dollars trying to dupe them into trying tobacco.