Tobacco, our most dangerous drug...

Meet Kevin

If you're looking for the baseball team during fourth-period lunch, don't bother searching the cafeteria or the practice diamond. On most afternoons, you'll find a handful of the top players from this Virginia high school, huddled in a friend's nearby basement. They eat pizza. They play Tony Hawk video games. And always—always—they smoke cigarettes.
"Kids hanging out. Whether it's a party or lunch, there are going to be smokes," says Kevin, an 18-year-old senior and a regular attendee at the basement brunch. Kevin is a star member of the school's golf team. He was also the team's ace pitcher until he tore a ligament in his knee.
And, until recently, he smoked two packs a day.
"Kevin's story is not unusual," says Dr. Bill Corrigall, former director of NIDA's Nicotine and Tobacco Addiction Program. "Many teens and even pre-teens begin to experiment with smoking, but soon find they are smoking regularly—they're addicted."

"I Want to Quit"

"I used to be able to run a mile under six minutes. Now I'm lucky to make it in eight. And I'm wheezing all the way," says Kevin, who's cut his daily use down to 10 cigarettes. "I want to quit. But it's not that easy."
More than ever, teens find that the best way to stop smoking is to never start at all. Teen smoking rates have steadily fallen since 1996, according to a NIDA-funded study. That's the good news. The bad news, experts say, is that teen smoking numbers are still too high. Each day, more than 3,600 children and adolescents become cigarette smokers, notes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That's more than 1 million teens a year. Roughly one third of them will die from a smoking-related illness.
"There's hard evidence that smoking leads to addiction, health problems, and death," says Dr. Eric Moolchan, former director of NIDA's Teen Tobacco Addiction Treatment Research Clinic. "Teens have a choice: They can become victims, or they can stop before they go too far. Better yet, they never have to start at all."

"I Must Have Been Crazy"

Even those who are well aware that smoking kills find cigarettes hard to resist. Sarah, an 18-year-old from Stockton, California, knows the dangers of cancer firsthand.
When she was a baby, she developed leukemia, a blood-related cancer. She underwent chemotherapy until she was 2. And, while she's been cancer-free ever since, the prospect of a relapse is never far from her mind.
Still, as a teen, Sarah went on to smoke a pack a day, putting herself at risk for cancer of the lungs, mouth, esophagus, larynx, stomach, pancreas, kidney, and bladder.
"When you're addicted to cigarettes, you can rationalize anything," says Sarah, who hasn't smoked in three months. "I'd tell myself: Well, I beat cancer once. I can do it again. Now I look back and think I must have been crazy."

"A Horrible Thing To See"

Unlike Sarah, some teens see the ravaging effects of cancer and vow never to pick up a cigarette. Ashley, a 14-year-old from Ocean City, New Jersey, watched her grandfather succumb to lung cancer.
"It's a horrible thing to see," she says. "The cancer just took over his body." He began smoking as a teenager in the Navy. Ashley understands how a teen in the 1940s might have been tricked into taking up cigarettes. But she can't see how today's teens fall for it.
"With all the information that's out there, with all the people who have died from smoking, it just puzzles me that kids keep doing it," she says. "You know that if you put that cigarette in your mouth, it might kill you. But you do it anyway. That just doesn't make sense."

Kevin's Story

On his parents:

"The big thing is: My whole family smokes. It's common for us after we eat dinner; we have a cigarette at our house. I smoke with my family. My friends are like, Oh my gosh your parents know, my parents would kill me."

On his girlfriend:

"I had one and she hated it. She used to try to get me to quit. She would take [my cigarettes] and throw them away. You are not going to quit just because someone throws them away. If you don't want to quit for yourself, you won't quit."

On fears of cancer

"Yeah, I'm worried. You think about it every day. You do worry about it. You still think about it, even at my age. It's not like, Oh it's not going to happen to me. What scares me is being sick for that long."

Sarah's Story

On having cancer as a baby:

"People tell me I can't remember, but I do. It's so scary to think about. Imagine my parents. It was horrendous! I kind of feel like I dodged a bullet."

On starting to smoke:

"I had a whole bunch of friends who smoked, and I started smoking with them. Gradually, I started smoking more and more. At my worst, I smoked about a pack a day."

On parents:

"My parents didn't like that I smoked. I told them. My dad is an ex-smoker. He hasn't smoked since I was born. They were kind of mad at first. Then, after awhile, they said, Don't smoke around me."

On expense:

"I got tired of it. It was too much money. The cheapest pack I could find was $3.40."

On regret:

"I wish I had never started, but most smokers say that."

Ashley's Story

On losing her grandfather:

"I was 5 when my grandfather died. I remember him a lot, but I would've liked to have gotten to know him better. He was my baby-sitter. He lived down the road."

On losing her neighbor:

"[Two years ago] I lost another very close neighbor [to lung cancer]. That one I was more aware of. I saw her near the end. She smoked right up to when she died. We were very close."

On getting involved:

"I started to see more of the affects of it from people around me. [So, I joined] the Student Coalition Against Tobacco (SCAT) at my high school."

On how other teens react to her activism:

"No one has ever said anything negative to me. They might have questioned me and wanted to learn more, but I never got a negative response. You get a lot of kids who want to join."
From Scholastic, Inc and the Scientists of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services