Parental Involvement: The Most Effective Youth Prevention Strategy Nobody Wants to Talk About
The strongest predictor of youth nicotine use is parental smoking. The most effective prevention strategy is parental cessation. And yet youth prevention programs almost never address parental behavior. The omission is political, not evidence-based.
Every dollar spent on school-based anti-vaping programs is a dollar not spent on helping parents quit smoking. The evidence on which is more effective at preventing youth nicotine use is clear: parental cessation is more powerful than any school curriculum. **The policy focus on school-based prevention, to the exclusion of parental cessation, is not evidence-based. It's political: regulating schools is easier than engaging parents, and blaming the industry for youth nicotine use is more popular than implicating the families whose behavior is the primary driver.**
