Teens who start smoking could smoke more over their lifetimes– which may be made shorter as a result. It’s a good reason to quit.
But teen smoking expert Dr.Yvonne Hunt of the National Institutes of Health says quit programs are often designed for adults, and teens are not little adults – they think and talk differently, and have different smoking patterns.
So Hunt and her coworkers developed a tool to help teens quit. Teens spend a lot of time texting, so SmokefreeTXT sends six weeks of teen-friendly texts to their cellphones. Teens can register at teen.smokefree.gov.
“If teens want to enroll on the go, using their mobile phone, they can also text “QUIT” – Q-U-I-T – to the shortcode “IQUIT,” which is 47848.”
