Focus group participants were asked to discuss their ideas for preventing teenage smoking. Almost all teen smokers agreed that high school was too late to attempt to prevent teenagers from smoking since many start smoking regularly around grade 8 or 9. The base survey showed that 83% of current teen smokers had started smoking before the age of 15. Almost all concluded that prevention at the fourth or fifth grade level would stand a much better chance to be successful. As far as content is concerned, respondents felt that programs should be very hard-hitting and leave a lasting impression (e.g. black lung, etc.) to be effective. More specifics on the adverse health effects of smoking should be presented as opposed to simply saying it is bad for you, especially the immediate effects due to the short-term future perspective of teens. In-person testimonials from a variety of ages were thought to be an effective way to communicate the consequences.

Although they feel that health should be the number one issue in prevention programs, this is not the full solution. As stated earlier, most participants said that they had at least some level of understanding of the health risks before they started smoking themselves but that this was not enough to deter them from starting. As much as they might deny it, it appears clear that teens carry a feeling of immortality and a lack of future perspective. These smokers cannot grasp the concept of cancer happening to them, and long-distance vision often does not go beyond aged 20 or 25.

Another interesting note concerns role models. Although many respondents mention that older "kids" influenced them to start smoking, it doesn’t tend to occur to younger teens that they in turn are influencing kids younger than themselves. Older teens seemed to be more aware of their influence on younger kids. Prevention may also be facilitated by making teen smokers more aware of the role they play in continuing the smoking trend to younger generations and the affect they have on younger kids, siblings and eventually their own children. The teen smokers we talked to feel it is too late for them but that successful intervention can be achieved with future generations.

Teen smokers in focus groups are not very aware of anti-smoking groups by name (a few mentioned Guerrilla Media), but almost all respondents have some degree of support for these groups. It should be noted however that this does appear to be a motherhood issue, in that respondents feel compelled to react positively to these groups from what they know about their intentions.

Teenage smokers almost unanimously agree that they are not influenced by any advertising whether it is for products such as cigarettes or social marketing messages such as the prevention of smoking. While we know this is not entirely true, teens and everyone else are inundated with advertising everywhere and therefore are less sensitive to it and in many cases successfully ignore it. Despite claiming not to be affected by advertising, many commented that the anti-smoking advertising did make them think, but wasn’t enough to make them quit.

Teen smokers in the focus groups were able to recall quite a few anti-smoking messages, but were not confident of the sponsors. The anti-smoking advertising they recalled seeing included recent government sponsored messages (Ex-model, Simple Math) and several other smoking related messages: guy in bar with a glass of cigarette chemicals, young girl looking in mirror ("Smoking. It will suck the life right out of you."), Nicorette, and Role Models (parent party paralleled with child’s tea party).

One issue teens agreed upon was that anti-smoking advertising needs to be more graphic and hard-hitting to make a lasting impression, otherwise they will "tune it out." Some of the drinking and driving advertising were given as examples of effective hard-hitting ads.

The advanced survey revealed that the large majority of teens agree with the practice of printing health warnings on cigarette packages (84%) and special cigarette taxes to pay for treatment of smoking related diseases (64%). There is less agreement that policies to discourage smoking will produce health care savings (48%) and that the government should sue tobacco companies to recover the costs of treating tobacco related diseases (38%). These opinions are very similar to that for the general population with one exception; teens are less likely to agree that policies to discourage smoking will produce health care savings (48% vs. 61% of all B.C. residents).

The focus groups also provided some feedback on smoking prevention policies. In terms of warnings on cigarette packages most teens thought that they should be there but that the current ones were not effective. Some suggested using graphic pictures to relate the dangers of smoking which is connected to their need to be given hard-hitting messages as discussed in terms of anti-smoking advertising.