Executive Summary This review focuses on the extent to which comprehensive, statewide, tobacco control programs in the United States have induced change in teenage smoking or made progress towards this goal and under what circumstances

This review focuses on the extent to which comprehensive, statewide, tobacco control programs in the United States have induced change in teenage smoking or made progress towards this goal and under what circumstances such programs are likely to be most effective. The sources for this review include published journal articles, reports and documents, rather than any primary data analysis. We review evidence for the extent to which individual strategies that comprise a comprehensive tobacco control program are related to reducing teenage tobacco use, thereby providing a rationale as to why such comprehensive programs might be expected to reduce adolescent smoking when implemented on a statewide basis. This evidence suggests that school-based smoking prevention programs using the social influences approach, public education through counteradvertising, strongly enforced measures to: prevent youth from purchasing cigarettes, ban smoking in public places and ban tobacco advertising; and real increases in the price of cigarettes, all lead to reductions in teenage tobacco smoking.