CHICAGO, (Reuters) – Smoking among America’s youth has reached epidemic proportions, starting them on the path to a lifetime of addiction, the U.S. surgeon general’s office said in its first report on youth smoking since 1994.
Among U.S. high school seniors, one in four is a regular cigarette smoker, and because few high school smokers are able to quit, some 80 percent will continue to smoke as adults, according to the report released on Thursday.
“Today, more than 600,000 middle school students and 3 million high school students smoke. We don’t want our children to start something now that they wont be able to change later in life,” Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin said in the report, which details the scope, health consequences and influences that lead to youth tobacco use.
An estimated 3,800 kids pick up their first cigarette every day and 9 in 10 current smokers started before the age of 18. Some 99 percent of all first-time tobacco use happens by the age of 26, exposing young people to the long-term health effects of smoking, such as lung cancer and heart disease.
Smoking kills more than 1,200 people every day, and every tobacco-related death is replaced by two new smokers under the age of 25, the report said.
