Report: Teens can get hooked on cigarettes after 2 weeks of puffing

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From staff and wire reports

ATLANTA, Georgia -- A new study finds that children who experiment with cigarettes can become physically hooked on tobacco faster than people think.

"Until now, we thought it took two years to become addicted to nicotine. In the study we find it takes just a few weeks," said Dr. Joseph DiFranza, who lead the research at the University of Massachusetts.

"The really important implication of this study is that we have to warn kids that you can't just fool around with cigarettes or experiment with cigarettes for a few weeks and then give it up," he said.

The study, conducted in 1998, followed 681 12- to 13-year-olds in central Massachusetts for a year and tracked their smoking habits. It found smoking two to three cigarettes a week for just a few weeks could make a child dependent on nicotine.

The researchers did not label any of the subjects in the study addicted because the standard definition of nicotine dependence assumes addiction cannot happen without prolonged heavy smoking. The scientists simply recorded symptoms that indicate addiction.

These include cravings, needing more to get the same buzz, withdrawal symptoms when not smoking, feeling addicted to tobacco and loss of control over the number of cigarettes smoked or the duration of smoking.

Ninety-five of the youths said they had started smoking occasionally -- at least one cigarette a month -- during the study. The scientists found that 60, or 63 percent, had one or more symptoms of addiction.

A quarter of those with symptoms got them within two weeks of starting to smoke, and several said their symptoms began within a few days.

Sixty-two percent said they had their first symptom before they began smoking every day, or that the symptoms made them start smoking daily.

"Nicotine addiction is not a gradual, slow process," said DiFranza, of the University of Massachusetts Medical School. "It's something that happens almost instantaneously in children."

DiFranza also said cigarettes do much more damage to young, developing bodies than to adult bodies.

Doctors also said techniques to help adults stop smoking, such as the patch or counseling, have not worked well with children and teen-agers. And informing kids about the dangers of smoking can be ineffective because many young people keep smoking even when they know the repercussions.

CNN Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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University of Massachusetts
UMass Medical School

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