KING COUNTY, WASHINGTON - Today, more than 90% of local tobacco retailers refuse to sell tobacco to youth, but youth still have other ways to access tobacco. Despite improvements in enforcement and education during the last decade, a typical senior in high school is more likely to smoke than the average adult.

How is this happening? How do youth get their cigarettes? And what are the attitudes that still need to be changed among both youth and adults to continue to reduce youth smoking rates?

The Access 2006 Conference in Seattle this week will seek to answer these questions and focus on the challenge of “social sources,” or sources other than retailers, as a significant point of youth tobacco access. This inaugural conference will bring together hundreds of people from around the country who work in preventing underage youth tobacco use, including health professionals, law enforcement, educators and researchers.

“As a society we have made great progress in reducing tobacco’s impact on our community, and now we must take our tobacco prevention and health promotion activities to a new level, especially with youth,” said King County Executive Ron Sims.

The conference’s keynote speaker will be Michael Moore, former Mississippi Attorney General and leader of national lawsuits against the tobacco industry “The success of the national lawsuit was an important first step in the battle to reduce America’s addiction to cigarettes,” said Moore. “There’s more work to be done. An estimated one in five youths identify themselves as frequent smokers. It’s clear we need to continue to develop innovative ways to reduce that terrifying number.”

In focus groups with youth, Public Health - Seattle & King County has found:

• reasons for smoking include rebellion and peer pressure, addiction, inconsistent adult behaviors and family members who smoke
• many youth feel it is acceptable to begin smoking at 14 and 15 years of age
• youth state that smoking, when compared to drug use, is the lesser of the evils and that this message is reinforced by adults

For more information on the Access 2006 Conference, visit: www.accessseattle2006.org. The conference will be held April 12 to April 14, 2006, at the Westin Hotel in Seattle. Note to editors: To gain access to the conference, reporters should go to the registration table.

The Access 2006 conference is sponsored by Public Health - Seattle & King County’s Tobacco Prevention Program, Washington State Department of Health’s Tobacco Prevention & Control Program, Department of Health & Human Services Center for Substance Abuse Prevention and the 7 Eleven Franchise Owners Association. 

For more information about the Tobacco Prevention Program at Public Health - Seattle & King County, visit: www.metrokc.gov/health/tobacco

Public Health – Seattle & King County is among the largest metropolitan health departments in the country, providing effective and innovative health and disease prevention services that achieve and sustain safer and healthier communities for over 1.8 million residents and visitors of King County . Answering the needs of an increasingly diverse population, Public Health - Seattle & King County touches people's lives every day through health promotion and prevention activities, disease surveillance, health care, outreach and referral services, environmental health services, emergency medical care, jail health services, and readiness and response to public health emergencies.

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