Israel | Health: 31% of teenagers smoke, a two-fold jump in six years

Smoking is getting worse among the youth of Israel: in a debate in the Knesset, the Ministry of Health presented alarming data according to which there has been a significant jump in the rate of smoking among the youth in Israel, many of whom are experimenting with electronic cigarettes and switching to regular tobacco smoking.

In the discussion of the committee for the fight against smoking and alcohol, she said Shira Keslothe CEO of the multi-sectoral initiative to eradicate smoking in Israel, because about a third of 15-17 year olds smoke a tobacco and nicotine product every month, including electronic cigarettes. This figure of 31% of the youth – is a significant jump in the last six years, since 2019 – when the rate was At these ages only 17.7% started with electronic cigarettes, and these became regular smokers.

Malka Katz in charge of drug and alcohol abuse prevention at the Ministry of Education, told about the ban on smoking in educational institutions and the activity to raise awareness among students and teaching staff, encouraging a healthy lifestyle, when 95% of the schools engaged in the 2018 school year in the prevention of drug abuse, alcohol and addictive behaviors. In addition, Students are chosen as “opinion leaders”, and are able to influence the behavior norms of their peers.

Noa Erlichson, the representative of the student council, whose father died about three months ago from the disease, said that assimilating a healthy lifestyle is extremely important. Ehrlichson said that the desired avoidance of smoking was hinted at at school, but no explicit words were said.

Orna Cohen,director of the smoking prevention field at the Ministry of Health, presented recent data according to which a quarter of teenagers experiment with smoking before the age of 12, 60% experiment before the age of 14, and one out of every five adolescents in the Arab sector smokes electronic cigarettes at least once a month.

In ultra-Orthodox society, the scope is even more severe, with 54% of ultra-orthodox yeshiva (12-15) having experimented with smoking, 80% of ultra-orthodox youth high schools dropping out, 77% of high ultra-orthodox yeshiva (18-22), while 56% of ultra ultra-orthodox yeshivas smoke regularly. Cohen emphasized that there is a direct correlation between the extent of smoking and lung cancer.

dr Shani Shiloh the CEO of the Israeli Lung Cancer Association, emphasized the possibility of preventing the disease, mainly by raising awareness and early diagnosis: “It is a disease that kills the most people in the world and the main risk factor is active smoking. Every day, seven new people are diagnosed with lung cancer, five die of this disease, and four of them are smokers. For the sake of comparison, every day one person dies from car accidents. Two out of three teenagers who experiment with smoking by the age of 18 will become regular smokers.”