I only smoke at parties, or
when I'm stressed out. I could quit any time. --15-year-old girl
Humans are by nature optimistic; they tend to underestimate many of the common health risks to which they are exposed. People vary in how they understand and use expressions of risk, and the way information is framed may affect health-related behaviors. These realities pose thorny problems in communicating effectively about cancer risk. In no population are these problems more pronounced than in children and teenagers, whose life experience is limited and who typically view themselves as invulnerable and immortal.
Every day, more than 3,000 American children begin smoking. Tobacco use is a pediatric epidemic, a continuing tragedy whose magnitude is once again growing. While still lower than the peak rates of the 1970s, smoking rates are again increasing among the Nation's youth, even among African American teenagers, whose smoking rates have been significantly lower than those of other youth populations. The percentage of teens who believe smoking is a great risk to health is declining. Smokeless tobacco use, which causes disfiguring and deadly oral cancers, is also rising steadily, mostly among white adolescent males.
Research has shown without question that tobacco use causes lung cancer and in fact is responsible for 30 percent of all cancer deaths. In addition, tobacco contributes to other cancers and a host of chronic, debilitating, and fatal heart and lung diseases. Moreover, even exposure to environmental tobacco smoke has been shown to cause specific genetic changes in children--changes that may put them on an early road to cancer.
We know that if children do not begin smoking before their twenties, the chance of tobacco addiction is small. NCI research is now focusing on understanding why some youth populations have been more successful in resisting peer pressure, media glamorization of smoking, and seductive tobacco company marketing, and what strategies will enable other children to avoid smoking. For example, a 10-year national demonstration project--called ASSIST--is testing tobacco use interventions to determine what mix of education, community involvement, media messages, smoking cessation help, and policy change will best keep our children and other high- risk populations from smoking. Success in these research and intervention efforts is critical to safeguard our most precious national resources--our children.
I'm not hooked on it. Anyway, I'm definitely not going to die of lung cancer. --16-year-old boy