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(Circulation. 1996;94:233.)
© 1996 American Heart Association, Inc.

Articles

Antidote for America's Leading Pediatric Disease

Brian Gilpin, BS; Scott Ballin, JD

Correspondence to Scott Ballin, JD, Office of Public Affairs, American Heart Association, 1150 Connecticut Ave NW, Suite 810, Washington, DC 20036.

	Introduction

 
David A. Kessler, MD, JD, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, calls smoking a pediatric disease. He says that seeing smoking as simply an adult problem is a dangerously short-sighted view. "Nicotine addiction begins when most tobacco users are teenagers, so let's call this what it really is: a pediatric disease," says Kessler.

Dr Kessler goes on to say that if we could affect the smoking habits of just one generation, we could radically reduce the incidence of smoking-related death and disease. And a second generation could see nicotine addiction go the way of smallpox and polio.

More than 3 million children in the United States currently smoke cigarettes. Every day, 3000 kids become regular smokers, and most of them will become addicted to nicotine before they are adults. Nearly 1000 of them will eventually die from a smoking-related disease. More than 80% of all adult smokers started smoking before they were 18 years of age. If a person has not started smoking by age 18, they are unlikely to ever become a smoker.

Smoking is the most important of the known modifiable risk factors for coronary heart disease in the United States. Nearly one fifth of deaths from cardiovascular diseases are attributable to smoking. In fact, cigarette smoking is the biggest risk factor for sudden cardiac death.

The antidote for the youth smoking epidemic is not found in a complex, expensive medical procedure or in an exotic drug therapy but in simple, inexpensive, public policy initiatives designed to . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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