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March 9th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda THURSDAY, March 8 (HealthDay News) — More than 3.6 million
children and teens in the United States smoke, according to a Surgeon
General’s report released Thursday that calls on the nation to curb youth
smoking.
“Today, all over America, there are middle-schoolers developing deadly
tobacco addictions before they can even drive a car,” said Kathleen
Sebelius, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
(HHS), during a morning press conference.
More than 600,000 middle school students and more than 3 million high
school students smoke. And three out of four teen smokers will continue to
smoke into adulthood, the surgeon general’s report warned.
Dr. Regina Benjamin, the Surgeon General, said “the report challenges
us to end the epidemic of smoking among young people.
“Cigarettes are designed for addiction,” she explained at the press
conference. Added ingredients such as sugar, flavoring and moisteners make
them even more addictive because they remove the harshness of tobacco. In
addition, additives like ammonia make it easier for nicotine to get into
the brain, she said.
The report — the first since 1994 to focus on young smokers — blames
tobacco companies, specifically tobacco marketing, for the onset of
adolescent smoking, noting that tobacco companies, despite claims to the
contrary, continue to direct their ads at children.
Dr. Howard Koh, assistant secretary for health at HHS, said it is no
accident that “too many of our children are addicted and too many cannot
quit and too many go on to die far to young.”
Koh said tobacco companies spend more than $1 million dollars an
hour — some $27 million a day — on marketing and promoting their
products in ways that make smoking look acceptable. These messages are
particularly prominent on the Internet, in movies and video games, he
said.
“The tobacco industry says its intent is only to promote brand choices
among smokers, but there is a difference between stated intent and
documented impact. Because regardless of intent the impact of tobacco
marketing is to encourage underage youth,” he said.
According to the report, tobacco is the leading cause of preventable
and premature death in the country, killing more than 1,200 Americans
every day. For everyone who dies from tobacco-related causes, two new
smokers under age 26 replace them, the report said.
Almost 90 percent of these new smokers smoke their first cigarette by
the time they are 18, the report noted.
“From 1997 to 2003 youth smoking fell rapidly, but since that time the
rate of decline has slowed,” Koh said. “In fact, there would be 3 million
smokers today if we as a society had sustained the declines seen between
1997 and 2003.”
Many teens are also using other tobacco products and using several
tobacco products together, he said.
The report also provides more data on the addictiveness of cigarettes.
The younger people are when they start smoking, “the more likely they are
to become addicted and the more heavily addicted they will become,” it
said.
Moreover, starting to smoke early in life increases the risks for the
early development of cardiovascular disease and reduced lung function, the
report said.
“We can and must continue to do more to accelerate the decline in youth
tobacco use,” said Koh. “Until we end the tobacco epidemic, more young
people will become addicted, more people will die, and more families will
be devastated by the suffering and loss of loved ones.”
Stop-smoking advocates hailed the report.
“This report underscores the critical importance of preventing tobacco
use among youth and young adults,” Charles D. Connor, president and CEO of
the American Lung Association, said in a statement. “This is a wake-up
call to all policymakers and community leaders that tobacco addiction is a
vicious and deadly cycle that can and must come to an end.”
Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said in
a statement that the report makes two points clear: “The tobacco
industry’s marketing is still addicting America’s kids, and elected
officials need to do more to protect our children from the scourge of
tobacco.”
The nation has made great progress in reducing smoking, he said, but
“this report is a stark warning that the battle against tobacco must be a
national priority.”
More information
For more information on kids smoking, visit the Campaign for Tobacco
Free Kids.
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