Teen smoking plagues Nunavik

ODILE NELSON

A staggering 80 per cent of Nunavik’s adolescents smoke, according to a report released last week by the Nunavik Regional Board of Health and Social Services.

The proportion could be the highest in the world for any regionally governed area.

“Right now we know that in Quebec, a little less than 30 per cent of the population as a whole smokes. Amongst Nunavik adolescents it is more than double this. At 80 per cent, well it’s much more difficult to be higher than that. It would mean almost everyone is smoking,” Dr. Serge Déry, the board’s director of public health, said last week.

Dr. Déry presented the report, which was derived from a 2001 cross-Nunavik dental hygiene survey, at the board’s annual general meeting in Kuujjuaq last Thursday.

The survey asked 129 adolescents between 14 and 16 years old if they smoked everyday, how many cigarettes they smoke each day and how old they were when they began smoking regularly.

It also questioned them about whether they thought smoking causes gum disease.

The results paint a portrait of pandemic tobacco use amongst Nunavik adolescents, with 79.8 per cent of adolescents responding that they smoke, 75 per cent reporting a daily smoking habit and 50 per cent saying they consumed between six and 10 cigarettes a day.

It also found 30 per cent of adolescents began smoking when they were younger than 10, and that 66 per cent continue their habit although they know it causes gum disease.

Dr. Déry said the statistics are disheartening but not surprising.

Tobacco use and the health problems associated with it have become pervasive in Northern society, he said, since foreign whalers first began trading tobacco with Nunavimmiut in the 19th century.

In the mid-1990s, the health board established an anti-tobacco campaign to help combat the problem. The program now includes educational brochures, counsellor training and free nicotine-suppression medications like Zyban for people who want to quit smoking.

But the latest numbers suggest the campaign has not reduced the number of teenage smokers in Nunavik.

“There is no evidence that things are improving at all — in fact it’s deteriorating,” Déry said.

“In the Santé Quebec survey in 1992 they found people from 15 to 24, approximately 70 per cent of persons were regular smokers. And in another health survey in the middle of the 90s they found in 12 and 13 year olds, 68 per cent were current smokers.”

Yet Déry does not believe the growing numbers mean the campaign has been ineffective.

Instead the campaign is bringing about a necessary shift in the region’s attitude towards tobacco use, he said.

“In Nunavik, smoking is the norm. It’s a question of de-normalizing smoking,” he said. “At the beginning of the 1990s you would have tried to talk about smoking cessation and you would have been thrown out of many of the communities. The rates are still very high but the view [of smoking] is changing.”

Such an adjustment is necessary, he said, before the statistics begin to drop.

Catherine Carry, special projects co-coordinator for the Pauktuutit Inuit Women’s Association in Ottawa, agrees.

Carry has worked closely with the Nunavik health board and continues to develop anti-smoking campaigns for the Inuit women’s organization.

“Getting youth to quit is only a part of an entire cessation program. The adults are role models and so their smoking and attitudes must also be addressed,” Carry said. “You need a systematic, multi-jurisdictional intervention to get young people to stop smoking.”

Déry also said any complete anti-smoking strategy for the region should be relevant to the community.

The health board plans to step up its anti-tobacco campaign with counsellors based in each community. It will also hold a Nunavik version of Quebec’s provincial smoking-cessation contest next March.