CAN NON-PROSECUTORY ENFORCEMENT OF PUBLIC-HEALTH LEGISLATION REDUCE SMOKING AMONG HIGH-SCHOOL-STUDENTS

Background: Smoking by adolescents has been identified as a major publ ic health issue. Raising the legal age of cigarette purchase from 16 t o 18 years has attempted to address the issue by restricting adolescen ts' access. Methods/Strategy, A prospective study evaluating the impac t of non-prosecutory enforcement of public health legislation involvin g 'beat police' was conducted in the Northern Sydney Health region. Se condary students, aged 12 to 17 years, from both intervention and cont rol regions were surveyed about cigarette smoking habits by means of a self-completed questionnaire administered pre-and post-intervention. Results: 12,502 anonymous questionnaires were completed. At baseline, 19.3% of male students and 21.2% of female students indicated they wer e current smokers. Age and sex stratified chi-squared analysis reveale d significantly lower postintervention smoking prevalence for year 8 a nd 10 females and year 7 males among the intervention group. Higher po stintervention smoking prevalences were demonstrated for year 7 and 9 females and year 8 males among the intervention group and in year 10 m ales and year 11 females among the control group. The analysis of comb ined baseline and follow-up data from coeducational schools with logis tic regression techniques demonstrated that the intervention had a sig nificant effect in reducing smoking prevalence among year 7 students o nly (OR=0.54). Conclusion: Our study demonstrates the difficulties in restricting high school students' access to cigarettes. Isolated non-p rosecutory strategies are likely to only have a limited impact on redu cing smoking prevalence among high school students.