Everyday in the United States 3,000 teens start smoking. Even though the media and schools keep sending out the message that tobacco use is hazardous to one's health, teens are smoking, chewing, and dipping tobacco in large numbers. Consider these facts:

• Teenage females are smoking more than ever before. The number of teenage females who smoke has doubled over the past 20 years.
  
• It is estimated that about 15 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds use cigarettes.
  
• In national samples of high school seniors, 13 percent of males and 12 percent of females describe themselves as daily smokers.
  
• One-quarter of high school seniors who smoke had their first cigarette by sixth grade, one-half by eighth grade.
  
• Over the last 20 years, the age at which teens start to smoke has continued to fall.
  
• According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an agency of the United States Public Health Service, each year an estimated 1 billion packs of cigarettes are sold to people younger than 18- even though it is against the law in many states.
  

According to U.S. Surgeon General Antonia Novello, "If current smoking rates were to continue in the United States... 5 million children now living in this country would die of smoking-related diseases."

So why do teens ever start to smoke? One major reason some teens smoke is that they feel insecure in social situations. Before they begin smoking, some teens believe that puffing on a cigarette will somehow remove their fears or insecurities, something a cigarette simply cannot do.

Teens may smoke because of peer pressure. Or they may smoke because advertising on billboards and in magazines has made them associate a particular brand with the attractive models pictured.

Teens may smoke because they think the bad effects of smoking on health occur only after many years of smoking. They may not realize that health risks begin from the moment the cigarette smoke from that first cigarette enters the body.

Perhaps the greatest reason young people smoke is that they believe that they can drop the habit at any time. They do not realize that for many smokers, smoking is no habit; it is an addiction that is difficult to shake. Still, some teens realize that people sometimes get addicted to cigarettes, yet feel certain that they are the exception and can stop at any time.

In a large survey of teens who smoke, half claimed they either definitely or probably would not be smoking after five years. They viewed it as a passing habit. The problem is that after five years of smoking, many of these same teens found that they had an addiction to cigarettes. Addiction includes physiological or psychological dependence. Many adult smokers who began smoking as teens are still at it because they are addicted.