Executive summary of the surgeon general's report: preventing tobacco use among young people.

Smoking and smokeless tobacco use are almost always initiated and established in adolescence. Besides its long-term effects on adults, tobacco-use produces specific health problems for adolescents. Since nicotine addiction also occurs during adolescence, adolescent tobacco users are likely to become adult tobacco users. Smoking and smokeless tobacco use are associated with other problem behaviors and occur early in the sequence of these behaviors. The outcomes of adolescent smoking and smokeless tobacco use continue to be of great public health importance, since one out of three US adolescents uses tobacco by age 18. The social environment of adolescents, including the functions, meanings, and images of smoking that are conveyed through cigarette advertising sets the stage for adolescents to begin using tobacco. As tobacco products are available and as peers begin to try them, these factors become personalized and relevant, and tobacco use may begin. This process most affects adolescents who, compared with their peers, have lower self-esteem and self-images, are less involved with school and academic achievement, have fewer skills to resist the offers of peers, and come from homes with lower socioeconomic status. Tobacco-use prevention programs that target the larger social environment of adolescents are both efficacious and warranted.