Developing an Advocacy Plan for Curbing Use of Tobacco Among Adolescents

This article discusses the key elements to establish an advocacy campaign against the use of tobacco by adolescents. It highlights the impact of current policies, laws, and regulations, and the three legs of lobbying to attain advocacy campaign goals. The article also suggests social media campaigns and changing the legal age to buy tobacco as effective measures to reduce tobacco use among adolescents.

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Developing an Advocacy Plan
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Developing an Advocacy Plan
When individuals or a group of people come together with the intention to influence both
financial, political foundations as well as the social framework, that is referred to as advocacy.
Consequently, when there is an urgent technique given to officials on a particular matter such as
misuse of tobacco which tends to assume a significant job in the legislative issue, it is advocacy.
Generally, there are certain factors which should be reviewed during the establishment of an
advocacy campaign aimed at curbing use of tobacco among the adolescents (Waters et al.,2015)
The current policies is one key element which is to be looked into so as to identify whether the
various needs of an advocacy campaign have been met or not. The other aspect is the existing
laws and regulations which influence the advocacy campaign. Lastly, the various techniques
which impact the policymakers should be evaluated, and this entails the use of three legs of
lobbying to attain advocacy campaign goals. The success of an advocacy campaign against the
use of tobacco by the adolescents entirely depends on the elements mentioned above. Thus there
will be a successful campaign.
The lawful access (MLA) for tobacco is built up as a state law in the United States. The
tobacco items were categorized into minors by these laws. A national non-acceptable age to
consumption of tobacco was set to be 18 years according to the 2009 Family Smoking
Prevention Tobacco Control Act. The use of tobacco by the adolescents is promoted by the
tobacco companies using the media sources such as social media, television and the internet.
Anti-Tobacco advocacy campaigns which aim at offering a positive image of a free lifestyle of
tobacco could be attained using the social media, and this is against the tobacco firms (Ross,
Dearing & Rollins, 2015). There are typically two social media campaigns which can be used to
carry out the campaign against the use of tobacco, and they include, The Truth.com and The Real

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Cost. One key thing which can be changed is the legal age to buy tobacco in the country. For
instance, the increase of the legal age up to 21 years will help reduce the use of tobacco by the
adolescents since it is considered as the social norm. When the adolescents are provided with
much time to mature and develop, the ability to refrain from temptation will be minimized, and
this could be done through advertisement of tobacco.
The war against the use of tobacco by the adolescent has been minimized in the USA by
the laws and regulations. At times, some of the laws and regulations could be removed based on
the fickle legal system of the country. A key example was the elimination of the Federal
Communications Commission Fairness Doctrine (Jawad et al.,2015). The above doctrine has led
to a media war especially for the adolescents in America. Consequently, it was repealed in 1987,
and this was on the basis that it had restricted the free speech rights of the broadcast journalists.
The lobbying for an advocacy campaign against the use of the use by the adolescent
requires the use of three typical legs of lobbying to succeed. Such three legs of lobbying include
grassroots, political and professional. The political aspect of the three legs of lobbying involves
the use of money to advocate against the use of tobacco by the adolescents and this is based on
the fact that there is often an influence of money in every aspect, that is federal and state
legislation (Huang et al.,2017). Often the legislation with much money can enforce their interest
during the legislation of new bills. However, there are usually specific barriers which tend to
negate the implication of money on legislation such as the stagnant economy and congressional
gridlock.
The professional lobbying, on the other hand, entails the use of experts to lobby in the
healthcare profession. A study which was conducted in 2017 in relation to a group of
pulmonologists view on the use of electronic cigarettes is a fundamental example of professional

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lobbying. Based on the study, the pulmonologist fought against the use of any tobacco-related
devices. The last leg of lobbying is the grassroots lobbying which involves the fight by different
organizations who are influential in the society. The primary aim of the community mobilization
is to help make changes in relation to social norms to create awareness on participation by the
community when the local health departments, for example, provides a particular school with
certain educational media in relation to smoking risk in the adolescents.
According to Hon (2015), the war against the use of tobacco has been stimulated by
ethical dilemmas. When smoking both at work and home is limited for the grown-ups, there will
be a reduced rate of smoking. With the increase in the limitation of smoking, there will be an
exhibition of smoking as a socially unsuitable. With minimal research on the limitations of
smoking in open places, there will be a higher rate of use of tobacco.
The understudy smoking has been brought down by different schools which do have a
variety of smoking techniques (Griffin & Thurber, 2015) Further, the link between smoking
limitations in the day, at school as well as at home can be controlled by the predominance of
juvenile tobacco. According to a research that was carried out on limitations on smoking during
the day, it was found out that the open places resulted in the possibility of low smoking rates
among the young people.
The prevention of the use of tobacco by the adolescents can be minimized by-laws
relating to smoking. For example, in the USA, there are certain laws which were passed to
promote free smoke working conditions. However, in an ethical view, it can be considered as a
means of denying various people their rights of choice (Farmer, 2019) Such laws tend to reduce
smoking among the adolescents. The laws can only work when they are implemented in a
particular workplace. Between 1988 to 1994, the use of tobacco fell by 13 percent and this can

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be considered as one of the critical case studies in which the American had on the ban on
smoking.

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References
Farmer, M. (2019). Advocacy in Action for Improved Health Outcomes. In Promoting Health
Equity Among Racially and Ethnically Diverse Adolescents (pp. 99-111). Springer,
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Griffin, P., & Thurber, J. A. (2015). Teaching public policy advocacy by combining academic
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Hon, L. (2015). Digital social advocacy in the Justice for Trayvon Campaign. Journal of Public
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Huang, L. L., Lazard, A. J., Pepper, J. K., Noar, S. M., Ranney, L. M., & Goldstein, A. O.
(2017). Impact of the real cost campaign on adolescents’ recall, attitudes, and risk
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Ross, H. M., Dearing, J. A., & Rollins, A. L. (2015). Oklahoma’s youth-driven tobacco policy
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