Smoking (Teenage)

While smoking among U.S. adults has steadily declined since the Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health in 1964, tobacco use among adolescents has followed a roller coaster pattern. The Monitoring the Future National Survey (Johnston & colleagues, 2001) found that smoking among U.S. high school seniors peaked at 39% in 1976, dropped to 29% in 1981, resurged to 37% in 1997, and then declined to 31% in 2000. Cigarettes are not the only source of tobacco use for teenagers, however. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (2000) reported that in 1999, 40.2% of high school students admitted using cigarettes, chewing tobacco, snuff, and/or cigars. This translates to 4.5 million teen tobacco users. Who are these teen tobacco users? CDC researchers found that:

• Around ...