Youth

1. Adults don’t make the decision to start smoking. Children do. The younger a person starts to smoke, the more highly addicted that individual will become, the longer the person will smoke and the more likely it is that the person will die of a tobacco related disease.
2. Despite recent declines, young people in the United States are still using tobacco at a high rate: 34.5 percent of high school students and 15.1 percent of middle school students currently use some form of tobacco (cigarettes, smokeless, cigars, pipes, bidis, or kreteks). Every day, more than 2,200 young people under the age of 18 become daily smokers. (Centers for Disease Control & Prevention,  Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, “Annual Smoking Attributable Mortality, Years of Potential Life Lost and Economic Costs-United States 1995-1999” April 12, 2002 51:14)