Introduction: 

Smoking remains a notable issue for young people. The health effects of long-term use are well known and very serious, causing 8 million deaths worldwide annually from Cancer, Heart attacks, COPD and many other diseases In Ireland there is a national determination to become tobacco free by 2025 by which is meant a prevalence of smoking of less than 5%. For this to be possible we need no new smokers to be added and most smokers to stop. Smoking in 16-year-olds has been reducing over the last 25 years and we need to monitor smoking in young people to see if we can eradicate smoking in youth.

Methods: In May 2019 using pen and paper and the standardised ESPAD survey instrument we surveyed a stratified random sample of 1949 students born in 2003. 49% were male and 51% were female.

Results: 

32% of respondents had tried smoking and 14% were current smokers, with 5% smoking daily. The majority (63%) of students reported starting to smoke at age 14 or 15. Access to cigarettes was reported as easy by 61% of students. Smoking was statistically significantly (p=0.001) associated with truancy and lower grades, perceived relative wealth, lower parental education, parental monitoring, rule setting, support, relationship with parents, peer smoking, alcohol, cannabis and other substance use. A trend analysis showed that, despite a reduction of over two-thirds since 1995 (the second largest decline of any of the seven major indicators of the ESPAD survey in Ireland), slightly more students reported smoking in 2019 than in 2015, and this was pronounced for boys. In Ireland, smoking among these 15-16-year olds was greatly reduced to 14% in 2019. This represents a reduction of over two-thirds (66%) since 1995.

Conclusions: 

While these results are encouraging the failure of prevalence to fall since 2015 is disappointing. It suggests that greater efforts are needed if our young people are to be tobacco free by 2025. More interventions focused on youth as well as all the known successful interventions that are effective in adults are needed.