Nicotine addiction: two out of three teenagers who experiment with cigarettes can no longer do without them

Two out of three is the conversion rate to daily tobacco consumption that researchers at Yale University in the United States have estimated after 16 years of sustained research.

This study, published in 2018 in the journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research [1], established that 68.9% of participants who had already experimented with cigarettes subsequently became daily smokers.

Given these results, it is undeniable that the number of consumers will only decline significantly if efforts to combat cigarette experimentation continue.

But how does a single cigarette manage to create a compulsive need to satisfy, which becomes increasingly demanding over time?

The answer is simple and can be summed up in one word: nicotine. This substance, naturally present in tobacco plants and used in the composition of many tobacco products, is actually a drug capable of inducing strong addiction. The tobacco industry has understood this well. Since the 1950s, it has conducted various research studies on the properties of nicotine.

The results allow for the improvement of the composition of tobacco products, why not ensure the addiction of consumers?

So what better way to ensure long-term sales than to accustom the still-developing adolescent brain to the pleasure of smoking, given that two out of three will become daily users? Enabling two out of three people to avoid nicotine addiction can only be achieved if experimenting with cigarettes ceases to be attractive to young people. In this sense, policies that make tobacco products less accessible and less socially acceptable must be developed effectively.