The 13th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health

Objective: This study has three objectives: (1) to describe the techniques used by the tobacco industry to influence Romanian young people in the last 15 years (2) to make an review of the situation of smoking among young people in Romania, (3) to present the actions developed in Romania in the field of tobacco control targeting young people, starting with research and continuing with health promotion, health education and advocacy activities.

Methods: The results are based on the data from literature as well as on author's personal files and experience and are illustrated with pictures.

Results: The transnational tobacco companies have started an aggressive campaign of promotion in Romania after the changing of communism regimes in1989, including a lot of advertisement targeted to young people, sponsorship of different social and cultural events for youth, offering of cigarette free samples and even organizing of so called smoking prevention programmes for young people. On the other hand, education of Romanian young people regarding smoking prevention had weaknesses: there were implemented insufficient programmes of information and education, many time the programmes were implemented just occasionally and for a short period of time, being noticed the missing of long term strategies as well as the missing of evaluation of the programmes. In the last few years' different governmental and non-governmental organizations were starting to involve themselves more actively in activities of tobacco control.This paper presents an overview of these activities and underlines the strengths and weaknesses of the tobacco control among young people in Romania.