T eenagers who pick up a cigarette for the first time may think of it as a harmless experiment. They are young and healthy, and they are unlikely to think that they are on a path to become lifelong smokers. And yet they are wrong. It's easy to think of smoking as an adult problem. But that is a dangerously shortsighted view . . . .
Nicotine addiction begins when most tobacco users are teenagers.
Kessler told of how every day 3,000 teens take up smoking, the youth prodded by an avalanche of advertising. The tobacco industry says smoking is a free choice made by an adult. Kessler said that 70 percent of teens who smoke report that they regret ever having started. Seventy-five percent have tried to quit at least once and failed. And those who don't stop smoking are headed down a well-worn path of disease.