Surgeon General: 1 in 4 high school students smokes regularly

This report is alarming.

Especially with the massive (and expensive) legal efforts for decades to put smoking in a dangerous light.

If 1 in 4 high school students smoke,

what's the total percentage among people in the same age range who don't go to school ?

Smoking among America's youth has reached epidemic proportions, starting them on the path to a lifetime of addiction, the U.S. surgeon general's office said in its first report on youth smoking since 1994.

Among U.S. high school seniors, one in four is a regular cigarette smoker, and because few high school smokers are able to quit, some 80 percent will continue to smoke as adults, according to the report released on Thursday.

"Today, more than 600,000 middle school students and 3 million high school students smoke. We don't want our children to start something now that they won't be able to change later in life," Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin said in the report, which details the scope, health consequences and influences that lead to youth tobacco use.

Smokers


If this is indicating a failed effort by lawmakers, can we get a refund from everybody responsible for the boondoggle ?

this isn't good for the insurance industry either !

Kind of hard to believe.

I wonder how often you have to light up to be a regular smoker?

i just graduated high school last year and i find that hard to believe to.

maybe one in four kids smokes a lil pot but no way are we talkin squares.

my school had a very wide demographic as well

Oh goodness.. So does this mean that simply passing countless new laws and telling kids No 20,000 times doesn't work? I'm shocked. So many would just be speechless at the mere suggestion. After all, doesn't passing laws solve everything?


I have a suggestion for how to make a real difference but the same people who think passing laws actually solves a thing will be the ones to scream the loudest against it. Take kids at a certain grade level and I'd suggest 5th or at the VERY latest, 6th and give them some hard education.

Take them two places. First, the morgue, Not to see a body... too many would think that was cool. No, just as one heck of a dramatic and somehow fitting place to see physical examples of lungs after a lifetime of smoking. Not pictures or videos..but the real thing and several of them so no one can tell themselves it was a one off, isolated example. Plenty of bodies are donated to 'science' or available to higher education facilities. Use that part of some and make that happen as a shock treatment BEFORE most smoke.

Second, take them through an Oncology ward to visit with the lung cancer patients that are willing to for the cause. make it small groups at a time, so there is no chance to fade into the background or make jokes and ignore the reality of the situation.


If we're serious about the smoking problem, laws aren't the answer and neither are taxes. They never were. Education is...and REAL education. Not propaganda. Just the hard, smelly and deeply disturbing reality of it at the end. I'll bet we see smoking among the NEXT generation drop to single digit percentages and the one after THAT to almost 0. It just takes a strong stomach from educators and lawmakers to make it happen, IMHO.