Research Design In Social Work 3-1

TOPIC: Impact of the Tobacco Act in the United States

First Draft – Chapter One

Introductory Chapter (Introduction) – minimum two – three pages

  1. Introduction about the topic, history of the topic, laws, regulations, and information that support your topic
  2. Research problem / Definition
  3. Justification and relevance of the study
  4. Objectives
  5. Research Questions
  6. Variables and definition of the variables
  7. Definition of important concepts
  8. Projected limitations of your study
  9. Research design description

Tobacco use is a global epidemic among young people. As with adults, it poses a serious health threat to youth and young adults in the United States and has significant implications for this nation’s public and economic health in the future (Perry et al. 1994; Kessler 1995).  The iResearch Design In Social Work 3-1.mpact of cigarette smoking and other tobacco use on chronic disease, which accounts for 75% of American spending on health care (Anderson 2010), is well-documented and undeniable. Although progress has been made since the first Surgeon General’s report on smoking and health in 1964 (U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare [USDHEW] 1964), nearly one in four high school seniors is a current smoker. Most young smokers become adult smokers. One-half of adult smokers die prematurely from tobacco-related diseases (Fagerström 2002; Doll et al. 2004). Despite thousands of programs to reduce youth smoking and hundreds of thousands of media stories on the dangers of tobacco use, generation after generation continues to use these deadly products, and family after family continues to suffer the devastating consequences. Yet a robust science base exists on social, biological, and environmental factors that influence young people to use tobacco, the physiology of progression from experimentation to addiction, other health effects of tobacco use, the epidemiology of youth and young adult tobacco use, and evidence-based interventions that have proven effective at reducing both initiation and prevalence of tobacco use among young people. Those are precisely the issues examined in this report, which aims to support the application of this robust science base.

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Nearly all tobacco use begins in childhood and adolescence (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services [USDHHS] 1994). In all, 88% of adult smokers who smoke daily report that they started smoking by the age of 18 years (see Chapter 3, “The Epidemiology of Tobacco Use Among Young People in the United States and Worldwide”). This is a time in life of great vulnerability to social influences (Steinberg 2004), such as those offered through the marketing of tobacco products and the modeling of smoking by attractive role models, as in movies (Dalton et al. 2009), which have especially strong effects on the young. This is also a time in life of heightened sensitivity to normative influences: as tobacco use is less tolerated in public areas and there are fewer social or regular users of tobacco, use decreases among youth (Alesci et al. 2003). And so, as we adults quit, we help protect our children. Research Design In Social Work 3-1.

Cigarettes are the only legal consumer products in the world that cause one-half of their long-term users to die prematurely (Fagerström 2002; Doll et al. 2004). As this epidemic continues to take its toll in the United States, it is also increasing in low- and middle-income countries that are least able to afford the resulting health and economic consequences (Peto and Lopez 2001; Reddy et al. 2006). It is past time to end this epidemic. To do so, primary prevention is required, for which our focus must be on youth and young adults. As noted in this report, we now have a set of proven tools and policies that can drastically lower youth initiation and use of tobacco products. Fully committing to using these tools and executing these policies consistently and aggressively is the most straight forward and effective to making future generations tobacco-free. Research Design In Social Work 3-1.