SMOKED SUCCESS? SOCIAL, CULTURAL, AND LEGAL CHANGES IN THE UNITED STATES, JAPAN, AND FRANCE HAVE LED TO A DECLINE IN TOBACCO USE. YET, TEENAGERS REFUSE TO BUDGE!

Dalila V. Hoover

Abstract

Once considered a part of everyday life, tobacco consumption has become a global public health crisis that has transcended national borders. By the end of 2011, tobacco will have killed nearly six million people, including more than 600,000 of people exposed to tobacco smoke. If current smoking patterns continue, the toll will nearly double by 2030 with more than 8 million deaths. To safeguard the public’s health, the United States, Japan, and France have taken action to change the acceptability of smoking. Although they have adopted a different approach, they have successfully altered and redefined their cultural perception of tobacco products and have ultimately contributed to the decline of tobacco consumption among the adult population. Yet, one of their population groups still resists these changes: Teenagers. The purpose of this article is to discuss how teenagers’ resilience to these cultural, political, and legal changes is an impediment to the proper application and enforcement of the tobacco regulatory systems in place in the United States, Japan, and France. In particular, this article highlights the various factors that may explain why these systems have yet proven to be an effective tool to combat teen smoking. Finally, this article examines how the controversial PUP laws adopted in the United States to penalize the purchase, use, and possession of tobacco products by teenagers are not the solution to remedy the current inadequacies associated with teen smoking. Instead, their focus should remain on the vendor who sells tobacco products illegally to teenagers rather than on the user. The adoption of similar PUP laws in Japan and France is inconceivable because punishment may be viewed merely as a tool to exacerbate teenagers’ desire to continue smoking and hence break the law rather than to educate.