A new study shows that preventing smoking in young people is even more difficult than in adults. Not only are children more vulnerable to advertising by tobacco companies, they are also more prone to becoming addicted.
’’It was assumed kids did not become hooked until they were smoking every day, and at least half a pack a day," says McGill University epidemiologist Jennifer O’Loughlin, commenting to Globalink* readers on recent findings from a study by McGill University of Medicine in Montreal, Canada.
"But nobody asked the kids... For some of the kids, it was love at first sight. They had one cigarette and they knew it was something they were going to do for the rest of their lives. For some people, nicotine is just what they have been waiting for... I expected that some kids would get hooked quickly, but I thought that the average kid would have to smoke for a few years to get hooked. I thought that kids who got hooked quickly would be the exception to the rule. As it turned out, the kids who did not get hooked quickly were the exception.
"This study has overturned a lot of conventional wisdom. Some of these children were hooked within a few days of starting to smoke. Kids who are smoking two cigarettes per week need help to overcome a dependency on nicotine. Even so, the data shows that youths who showed signs of being hooked at these very low levels of consumption were 44 times more likely to be still smoking at the end of the study.
"Because the adolescent brain is still developing, adolescents may be more vulnerable to addiction than adults. Data from human and animal studies leads me to suspect that addiction to nicotine begins, in many cases, with the first cigarette."
"This is not good news. If children are getting addicted very early on after very low exposures, it means that prevention is going to become more and more difficult to sell. What we will be talking about is cessation for children - nicotine patches, inhalers, Zyban and everything else."
Amanda Sandford, research manager, Action on Smoking and Health (London) added: "Nicotine is a highly addictive potent drug but until now there have been few studies to measure the level of addiction in young people. Teenagers typically underestimate the power of nicotine, possibly because tobacco is a legal drug, and is not perceived to be as dangerous as many illegal substances."
The conclusion for prevention programmes? William V. Corr, Executive Vice President, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids (Washington) says: "This study is powerful evidence that the best way to protect our kids from the dangers of tobacco is to prevent them from ever starting to smoke. We know that cigarette tax increases and comprehensive tobacco prevention programmes work to reduce youth tobacco use. This new study is a wake-up call for elected officials that our kids are getting addicted more quickly than we thought and they must act quickly to protect them."
*Globalink (the International Tobacco Control Network) is an electronic news service managed by the International Union Against Cancer (UICC). EPHA’s president, Andrew Hayes, is responsible for UICC’s European Liaison.
"Tobacco Control" is a quarterly scientific journal produced by the BMJ Publishing Group of the British Medical Association (BMA).
Couch potato syndrome
European children are getting fatter - with serious consequences for their health. Twenty five percent of obese children and 21% of obese adolescents tested by Yale researchers were glucose intolerant and at high risk for developing diabetes, according to an article published earlier this year in the New England Journal of Medicine. Obesity also increases the risk of cardiovascular disease. The European Heart Network’s Heart Matters (June 2001) reports a study showing that cardiovascular mortality was twice as high for people in the top quarter of weight distribution during their youth.
