For the first time in nearly two decades, the Surgeon General released a report looking at youth tobacco usage and the results weren't good. Nearly one in five U.S. high school teens smoke.
More than 600,000 middle school students and three million high school students smoke. The report said because teens bodies are still developing, they're also more susceptible to the addictiveness of smoking and other forms of tobacco use.
"The younger a child is when they try cigarettes, the more likely they are to get and stay addicted to nicotine," said Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius.
Those teens choosing to use tobacco at such a young age also face heart and lung problems and even a shorter life-span.
"The decision to start at 14 or 15 is more than likely going to lead to premature death by that individual," explained Texas American Cancer Society Director of Government Relations, James Gray.
"Everyday 1,200 Americans die from smoking and each of those people are being replaced by two young smokers," said Regina Benjamin with the Surgeon General.
Studies show that 90 percent of adults start smoking before they turn 18 years old. Gray said if we can stop teens from trying cigarettes before that age, their risk of ever starting to smoke is greatly reduced, almost to nothing.
In recent years, the state has cut funding that support programs that encourage anti-tobacco education for kids. Something Gray said has hurt our youth dramatically.
"That group that is most vulnerable to that message is not hearing it anymore," he said. "Primarily as a result of state cutting back on programs that have been proven to be effective from stopping kids from ever starting to smoke."
Keeping up with the money spent by large tobacco companies, Gray added, is another challenge they have and will continue to face.
"They spend about one million dollars an hour marketing their product to the country," Gray said. "That's one million dollars an hour. What they spend in five hours, Texas spends in a year and we just can't compete with the ubiquitous messaging that the tobacco industry puts out there. Until those programs and funds are at a level that allow us to compete at some level with big tobacco, Texas youth are going to be preyed to the messaging of the tobacco companies," he added.
