For young people in Iceland, the novelty and excitement of smoking tobacco and drinking alcohol are outdated .In this Nordic country, finding teenagers interested in drinking or smoking cigarettes or cannabis is rare.Find out how This country has reached that point.
How does Iceland get its young people to stop smoking and drinking alcohol?
The use of addictive substances by adolescents and young people in Iceland is recorded in very low figures .Only 5% of boys between 14 and 16 years old say they have consumed alcohol during the previous month.
Only 3% of that same public indicated smoking tobacco daily and 7% responded that they smoke cannabis at least once in the previous thirty days.
These numbers are impressive if we compare them with the results that the same issues They throw in the rest of the European continent, where the average is 47% of young people who consume alcoholic beverages , there are 13% of tobacco smokers and 7% of hashish.
In the same way, in Latin America the indicators are also high.35% of young people between 13 and 15 say they have drunk alcohol in the last month and approximately 17% smoke daily, according to the latest information from UNICEF.
The situation in this This aspect has not always been this idyllic in Iceland, since at the end of the decade of the 90s, the Nordic country had one of the highest levels of alcohol and tobacco consumption in the European continent.
that is a hazana that this nation of just 300 thousand inhabitants has transformed these tendencies and they owe it all to a program called Youth in Iceland ( Youth in Iceland ) , which since 1998 was undertaken with the aim of reducing the consumption of addictive substances among youth.
Jon Sigfusson, director of the Icelandic Center for Research and Social Analysis, is also in charge of the aforementioned program and ensures that the problem is not archived and continues to be a priority , so that investigations in this regard are ongoing.
Every two years, Youth in Iceland conducts surveys in schools. In these surveys they obtain details about adolescent sex, their consumption patterns, household characteristics, truancy and their emotional problems.
From of these results, the managers identify the risk and protection factors n against the use of addictive substances.Then, the next step is to define a strategy to minimize risk factors and reduce consumption.
«Nothing happened one day for another.But it was possible to act because the data showed us, for example, the great importance of parental factors. That showed us the need to inform parents and explain that they are the main preventive factor for their children: spend time with them, support them, control them and monitor them, ”said Sigfusson.
Thus, one of the determining factors in terms of drinking and smoking is revealed: the presence of responsible parents in the lives of children and young people, who clearly show them the consequences of consuming addictive substances, always within the balance between being strict and too permissive, the fact that parents are interested, communicate and be part of the existence of their children, helping them fill their time with activities and interests that motivate them, makes them not so interested in acquiring these bad habits that can change their destinies.
Maybe the rest of the countries should take an example from Iceland and look for ways to get closer to the needs and habits of young people, to see in what aspects you can improve as a society, preventing them from falling into addictions that harm them.
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Images: jarmoluk/Comfreak
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