From Substances to Sex …Surgeon General Richard Carmona on Keeping Teens Healthy and Safe

By Bill Lindsay

When it comes to teen health, most parents remain concerned about protecting their children from injury – whether it’s on the playing field, on a bike or in a car. But the topics of most concern to parents of adolescents and emerging adults are inevitably sex and substances – from tobacco to alcohol and illegal drugs.

As with many other areas of public health, when it comes to teens’ health issues, Surgeon General Richard Carmona says “we need to do a better job of raising awareness and health literacy.”

And while the Surgeon General cites improvements in reducing teens’ use of tobacco, alcohol and illegal drugs, he admits that there’s still work to be done in these areas, particularly with smoking.

“We still have about 4,000 kids a day who start smoking. And, of those, about half of them will become chronic smokers,” he says. “Smoking is the single largest preventable cause of death in this country. It’s a huge, huge problem.”

To combat this, Carmona points to a number of initiatives – from toll-free “quit lines” to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) Web sites with links to resources and advice on quitting. But when it comes to kids, he says, “We have to figure out how to stop them from starting. After you’re already smoking, then it’s, ‘How do we get you off of this as quickly as possible?’ Because once you’re hooked, it’s real difficult to break the cycle.”

Sexual Health and Education