Glencoe Health

Introduction:
The tobacco industry makes billions of dollars annually. In order to maintain this profitability, they need to create more than 400,000 new teen addicts every year. In this lesson, you learned some of the harmful short- and long-term effects of teen tobacco use. The Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids is an organization that aims to prevent teens from starting to smoke, help smokers quit, and protect nonsmokers from the dangers of secondhand smoke. Its fact sheet on smoking and kids has more information about how smoking affects young people and about the extensive efforts tobacco companies make to market their products.

Links to Explore:
Smoking and Kids
http://tobaccofreekids.org/research/factsheets/pdf/0001.pdf

Directions:

• Click on the link and read the fact sheet on youth smoking.
• After reading the fact sheet, answer these questions:

1			What percentage of adult smokers started by the age of 18?
2			When teens or younger kids experiment with cigarettes, how long does it take for symptoms of addiction to develop?
3			How much money do tobacco companies spend every day to market cigarettes?
4			Which is more likely to influence a teen to smoke: cigarette marketing or peer pressure?
5			Of all teen smokers, roughly how many will die prematurely from smoking related illnesses?