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Trends in Smoking Initiation
Among Adolescents and Young Adults
The July 21, 1995, issue of the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention's (CDC) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR)
contains the article, "Trends in Smoking Initiation Among Adolescents and Young
Adults-United States, 1980-1989." The study found that adolescent smoking initiation
rates decreased slightly from 1980 through 1984, and then increased through 1989.
Cigarette marketing practices appeared to be the factor most likely to account for this
increase in teen smoking initiation rates.
The study also found the following:
- This lack of progress in decreasing smoking among youth resulted in more than
600,000 additional teenagers starting to smoke.
- During the 1980s, cigarette promotional expenditures (in 1993 dollars) more
than quadrupled, from $771 million in 1980 to $3.2 billion in 1989. The largest increase
in adolescent smoking initiation was in 1988, the year that the Joe Camel cartoon
character was introduced nationally.
- The most recent national survey data show that adolescent smoking rates
continue to rise. To reverse this trend, intensified youth prevention efforts are needed,
such as restricting the features of cigarette advertising and promotion that appeal to
youths, conducting mass media campaigns, strictly enforcing laws that prohibit tobacco
sales to minors, and increasing cigarette excise taxes.
Trends in
Smoking Initiation Among Adolescents and Young Adults — United States,
1980-1989 44(28);521-525, July 21, 1995
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