A new anti-smoking website was launched earlier this week targeting girls between the ages of 8-11. It made me think about my experiences with smoking at that age and ponder how effective a website like this would have been for me.

When I was 8 years old cigarettes were still being advertised and shamelessly glamorized by celebrities. My favorite Uncle smoked about a pack a day and would routinely send me to the corner store with a note and a couple of bucks to get him a fresh pack. The store clerk never batted an eye. I would proudly carry the cigarettes home in full view, hoping people would think they were mine. But the desire to actually try smoking didn’t come until about the age of 13, and that was with a healthy dose of peer pressure. No amount of ingrained good sense or educational videos in the classroom could have stopped me from doing what was necessary to fit in with my friends - a much greater motivator at the time than vague warnings of a distant chance of lung cancer and premature death. I continued to smoke in fits and starts through high school, mostly just to be social, but the idea of quitting never entered my mind. Quit what? I never considered myself a real “smoker” like my Uncle, smoking was just something rebellious and cool to do temporarily. “Quitting” was for old people who had been smoking all their lives. 

So when I look today at this site and try to think back to my mindset at age 8-11, it strikes me that, while good intentioned, this website would not have stopped me from experimenting with smoking or continuing to smoke. In fact, some of the site would have been downright puzzling. Under the heading of "ask an expert" for example, I'm reminded that the money I am spending on cigarettes could be spent on the movies instead. Perhaps I'm wildly out of touch, but are 8-11 year old girls really strolling into corner stores today and buying up cigarettes with their pocket money? As a young closet smoker, I was lucky to sneak a cigarette from my Uncle when he wasn’t looking - and then it was a prized possession to be shared with friends. The "How to Quit" tips would have been equally as foreign. Pick a quit date? Get rid of your ashtrays and lighters? Talk with your doctor to get nicotine patches?!

Why, I'm just getting started, why stop now?

So what would have worked for me? Unfortunately the answer is not as simple as a new website. It would have required an absence of the external stimuli that normalized smoking to begin with. No peer pressure, no smoking Uncles, no cigarettes on TV, no candy "cigs" and definitely no Joe Camel. Replace all that with just the bad stuff - the black lungs, yellow teeth, bad breath and oral cancers. A complete social decoupling of the words "cool" and "smoking". Now, that would have done the trick. Unfortunately, that's a tall order. So I applaud the Dartmouth Children's Hospital and Dartmouth Medical School for making an effort. I just hope the effort pays off.