The younger you start smoking, the more likely you are to smoke daily as an adult.

That's according to new research that reveals teenagers who smoked the most and children who started smoking at younger ages were more likely to be daily smokers in their 20s and were less likely to quit smoking by their 40s.

Additionally, even children who only tried smoking a few cigarettes were more likely to end up as a daily adult smoker.

The percentage of participants who smoked daily during their 20s was 8% for those who first tried smoking at age 18-19; 33% for those who first tried smoking at age 15-17; 48% for those who first tried smoking at age 13-14; and 50% for those who first tried smoking during ages 6-12.

Only 2.6% of participants who took up smoking for the first time after their 20s smoked in their 40s.

David Jacobs, lead study author and Mayo Professor of Public Health in the Division of Epidemiology and Community Health at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, said: 'Cigarette smoking is an avoidable health risk, and its seeds are in childhood. Cigarette smoking, even experimentally, among children of any age should be strongly discouraged.'

The new research has the longest follow-up of any study focused on smoking at an early age, using information obtained directly from children and adolescents in the 1970s to 1980s and re-contacting many of them as recently as 2018.

Although the current study was conducted in three developed nations, the researchers believe that the results likely apply more broadly.

You can read more here – https://newsroom.heart.org/news/kids-or-teen-smoke...

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