Youth and Smoking

Visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website to see the references for this article and for more information about smoking and your health.

Smoking and smokeless tobacco use are initiated and established primarily during adolescence. More than 80% of adult smokers begin smoking before 18 years of age. Additionally, adolescent smokeless tobacco users are more likely than nonusers to become adult cigarette smokers.

Youth cigarette use declined sharply during 1997–2003. Since that time, rates have declined far more slowly.

Each day in the United States, approximately 3,800 young people under 18 years of age smoke their first cigarette, and an estimated 1,000 youth in that age group become daily cigarette smokers.

Some factors associated with youth tobacco use include the following:

• Low socioeconomic status 
• Use and approval of tobacco use by peers or siblings 
• Exposure to smoking in movies 
• Lack of skills to resist influences to tobacco use 
• Smoking by parents or guardians and/or lack of parental support or involvement 
• Accessibility, availability, and price of tobacco products 
• A perception that tobacco use is the norm 
• Low levels of academic achievement 
• Low self-image or self-esteem 
• Exposure to tobacco advertising 
• Aggressive behavior (e.g., fighting, carrying weapons)

Read the article "Teen smoking linked to earlier death" published October 5, 2012.