May 31 was World No Tobacco Day. That smoking harms the lungs has been known for decades. Nevertheless, the consequences of tobacco use, especially COPD and lung cancer, are still the most common preventable causes of death in the developed world.
In Germany, the numbers of smokers continue to decline. Teenagers in particular already smoke much less often today. While at the end of the 1990s just under one in three young people were smoking, today there only around 10 percent are smokers. However, one third of young adults between the ages of 18 and 29 are smokeing, many of them daily. With increasing age, the proportion of daily smokers increases in both sexes. The education about the dangers of tobacco should start early.
The Germany-wide association "Aufklärung gegen Tabak" (AGT), an initiative of medical students, has more than 1,500 volunteer contributors from 28 German, four Austrian and two Swiss universities, effectively informing about 23,800 pupils about smoking each year. Since its founding in 2012, the German initiative has also been able to network internationally. 59 medical faculties in 11 other countries are involved in the activities in the "Education Against Tobacco" network. In addition to direct educational work on-site at the schools, the network has also developed two science-based apps with over 400,000 users for smoking prevention and weaning.
BREATH, the Hanoverian site of the German Center for Lung Research, supports the local group of the AGT at the Hannover Medical School. The members were equipped with new T-shirts. Joint actions, performances and events around the early anti-smoking education are planned. If you have further questions about the work of the AGT, please do not hesitate to contact the BREATH team.

Text: BREATH / CD
Picture: AGT