Washington, Aug 11 (Inditop.com) Health educators should club smoking and drinking when they speak to teenagers about their dangers as those who drink heavily are also likely to be heavy smokers, researchers say.
Brian Daly, assistant professor of public health at the Temple University (T-U), said equal instances of smoking and binge drinking among teenagers highlights the need for a multi-pronged approach to education and intervention.
“These are important findings because they emphasise the need for education and intervention programs that target the co-occurrence of these two health risks,” Daly was quoted as saying in a T-U release.
Daly and colleagues determined rates of smoking and drinking through the collection of anonymous survey data from 2,450 African American, Hispanic and Caucasian students in grades 9-12 at Philadelphia public high schools.
Students’ responses were compiled from the 2007 Philadelphia Youth Behavioural Risk Survey (YRBS). Respondents were asked how many cigarettes they had per day over 30 days, and how many days over a 30-day period they had five or more drinks in a row.
“Those numbers resulted in very few studies which looked at both smoking and binge drinking in a diverse sample, most focused only on instances of these in Caucasian or Hispanic adolescents,” said Daly.
