Roken en jongeren

• In this article, we discuss the scientific knowledge on the effects of interventions that help young people to quit smoking and interventions that should prevent young people from starting to smoke.
• We also describe the interventions in the Netherlands that, after a quality assessment, have been included in the database of the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) Centre for Healthy Living.
• Interventions have varying degrees of success in helping young people to quit smoking. There are only indications of a modest effect of behavioural interventions.
• Preventive interventions mostly occur in a school setting and are making a modest contribution to the reduction of the number of young people that start smoking.
• There are preliminary indications of the effectiveness of interventions in a medical setting. However, research into this is rare and there is no insight in long-term effects.
• The database of the RIVM Centre for Healthy Living includes mainly preventive interventions in a school setting and only one smoking cessation intervention.

Conflict of interest and financial support: none declared.