Media Contact: Nancy Stringer (619) 543-6163, nstringer@ucsd.edu

UCSD STUDY SHOWS NUMBER OF TEENSWHO START SMOKING EACH DAY IN U.S.

A study by researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) Cancer Center provides the first hard data on the number of young people who start smoking each day in the United States, and the news is not good.

“Our research shows that each day a minimum of 3,000 youth (11 to 20 years of age) in this country become established smokers,” said Elizabeth A. Gilpin, M.S., of the UCSD Cancer Center’s Cancer Prevention and Control Program.  “Two thousand of those new established smokers are under 18 years old, too young to legally purchase cigarettes.  These numbers are disturbing, and highlight the urgent need for increased tobacco control efforts aimed at young people.”

Gilpin is also clinical professor of biostatistics in the UCSD Department of Family and Preventive Medicine.

The findings, published in the October issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health, also show that each day in the U.S. 4,800 adolescents, 11 to 17 years of age, try their first cigarette.  That number jumps to 5,500 when older youth, 18 to 20 years of age, are included. 

These estimates were based on adolescent respondents to the 1989 and 1993 Teenage Attitudes and Practices Surveys (TAPS), a national telephone survey.  More recent school-based surveys have shown sharp increases in many measures of adolescent smoking.  For example, smoking among 8^th graders has increased from 14 percent in 1991 to 21 percent in 1996.  Also, telephone surveys such as the TAPS tend to underestimate tobacco use compared to results from school surveys.  Consequently, the researchers say, the number of American young people now experimenting for the first time or becoming established smokers each day may be higher than what is reflected in this report. 

The figure of 3,000 new teen smokers each day in the U.S. first came to light several years ago; however, the methodology was not precise and the figure has been challenged and viewed with some skepticism.  The number originated from a report that divided by 365 the number of current smokers 20 years of age in the U.S. population in 1985, as estimated from a national telephone survey.  The new analysis defines the age range and what it means to be an established smoker -- anyone who reports smoking at least 100 cigarettes in their lifetime.  The estimates were computed from changes in prevalence with age of report of any smoking, or reaching a lifetime level of 100 cigarettes. 

Besides Gilpin, co-authors on this report are Won S. Choi, Ph.D., Charles Berry, Ph.D., and John P. Pierce, Ph.D., all of the UCSD Department of Family and Preventive Medicine.  Choi and Pierce are also with the UCSD Cancer Center’s Cancer Prevention and Control Program.

This research was funded by the National Cancer Institute.