Just For Teens
Elbert County Public Health provides confidential and low-cost birth control, annual exam and STD screening and prevention. For more information and appointment, please call 303-621-3144.
For more information on abstinence, birth control, STD's and sexual health, try these websites:
www.teenwire.com
www.sexetc.org
www.kidshealth.org/teen/sexual_health/contraception/abstinence.html
www.coolnurse.com
www.girlshealth.gov
www.headaches.org
Youth Tobacco Prevention and InterventionTobacco is the drug most commonly used by children and adolescents in the United States. Its use correlates with many of the other risk behaviors of adolescence. In fact, tobacco is the gateway drug to other drugs of abuse such as marijuana and alcohol. Because adolescent risk behaviors are so intertwined, it is important to address the prevention of tobacco use within the context of other risk behaviors.
Preventing tobacco use among youth has emerged as a major focus of tobacco control efforts, because tobacco use and subsequent addiction take root in adolescence. Among adults in the United States who have ever smoked daily, nearly 90 percent tried their first cigarette before age 18 years, and 53 percent became daily smokers before age 18.
In Colorado
- Approximately 111,000 youth aged 15 to 19 years are smokers.
- Most Colorado youth who smoke had their first cigarette when they were 10 years old or younger.
- An alarming 36.6 percent of students in grades nine to 12 reported smoking at least one during the previous month.
- Approximately 23 percent of Colorado boys report spit tobacco use, compared with a national rate of 15.8 percent.
- Each year another 10,800 of the state’s youth join the ranks of smokers and become regular users.
Without intervention, a projected 92,000 Colorado youth alive today will eventually die from a tobacco-related illness.
- Among these youth smokers who continue to smoke past the age of 35, half will lose their life to a tobacco-related disease.
There is clearly an ongoing loss of human potential and productivity, which affects the state’s ability to compete at the level we must in today’s economic environment. Eighty percent of all adult smokers begin using tobacco before they complete high school. It stands to reason then, that schools are the logical place to begin comprehensive tobacco prevention efforts.
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