Smoking rates have been dropping steadily in Europe since the 1970s, but, according to new research published in PLOS ONE, 11- to 15-year-olds are using tobacco more frequently.
“Since 1970, campaigns against smoking seem to have been largely successful, but the message has not been able to reach the youngest ages,” study author Cecilie Svanes, a professor in the Centre for International Health at the University of Bergen, said in a release.
Svanes was part of an effort, known as the Ageing Lungs in European Cohorts (ALEC) study, to assess trends in smoking initiation between 1970 and 2009. She and her colleagues pooled data from 119,104 smokers across eastern, western, northern and southern Europe for the research and retrospectively evaluated tobacco trends by age group, sex and region.
The team found smoking initiation had fallen drastically among 16- to 20-year-olds—the age most smokers take their first drag. Numbers also dropped among 21- to 35-year-olds, Svanes et al. reported, but the youngest age bracket saw an increase in tobacco use, especially during the past 10 years. The most significant hike was observed in girls between 11 and 15 years old living in Western Europe, where 40 per 1,000 started smoking yearly between 2000 and 2009.
Svanes said the data indicates the need for more targeted interventions for children, especially since smoking at such a young age can have lasting, detrimental consequences.
“We have seen that for men who start smoking before they are 15, there are influences on any future children,” she said. “For example, their offspring get asthma more often than others. In animal tests we have also seen that it is the nicotine itself that causes the higher risk. If this is the case for humans, as well, it means that neither snuff nor e-cigarettes are good alternatives to cigarettes, at least not for the youngest age groups.”
The authors wrote smoking initiation remains “unacceptably high” among young Europeans and deserves attention.
“Society has more to win by focusing anti-smoking campaigns on the youngest,” Svanes said. “Of course, one reduces the risk of heart attack and lung cancer if you stop smoking at an old age, but society as a whole gains more by keeping the youngest age groups healthy for the rest of their life.”
After graduating from Indiana University-Bloomington with a bachelor’s in journalism, Anicka joined TriMed’s Chicago team in 2017 covering cardiology. Close to her heart is long-form journalism, Pilot G-2 pens, dark chocolate and her dog Harper Lee.