A survey released today by the Iowa Department of Public Health shows tobacco use among kids in middle and high school has dropped. Kevin Arrowsmith is a spokesperson for the Department. He says 13-thousand-600 middle school students reported using tobacco, a drop of 32-percent, while 54-thousand-500 high school students reported using tobacco, a drop of 15-percent. Arrowsmith believes the “Just Eliminate Lies” ad campaign –which uses kids to talk about the ills of tobacco use — is partly responsible for the drop. He says using peers to visit with students about tobacco use is more effective than having adults deliver the message. Arrowsmith says this is good news, but they can’t let up. He says around 66-percent of those students who said they smoked expressed a desire to quit. He says they want to keep seeing the number of tobacco users in middle and high school drop. Arrowsmith says there was a disturbing finding in the survey.He says 63-percent of the middle school students and 74-percent of the high school students reported they’d been exposed to second-hand smoke. Arrowsmith says that’s alarming as second-hand smoke accounts for the death of 500 Iowans each year. Arrowsmith says the survey included over 33-hundred students.
