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Alarming Facts About Smoking Addiction |
How easy is it to get hooked on tobacco? Teenagers typically underestimate the addictive power of nicotine, partly because tobacco is a legal substance and is not perceived to be as dangerous as many illegal drugs. But a study conducted by Dr. Joseph DiFranza of the University of Massachusetts Medical School and an international team of researchers showed how dangerously addictive tobacco can be.
Their study, published in the September issue of Tobacco Control, involved 679 seventh-grade students who were interviewed repeatedly for 30 months. Of the 332 who tried cigarettes or other forms of tobacco, 40 percent showed some sign of addiction, including irritability, difficulty quitting and trouble concentrating without a cigarette.
Many of them had become addicted while smoking only a few cigarettes a day, some as few as two per week. "Some of these kids were hooked within a few days of starting to smoke," Dr. DiFranza reported. The experts had thought that young smokers became addicted only when they smoked 10 or more cigarettes a day. The report notes the average child smoker experiments with smoking at 11.7 years of age and begins smoking monthly at 12.8 years. A survey released Aug. 28 reported that worldwide 14 percent of 13- to 15-year-olds smoke, but two thirds of them already want to quit.
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