LONDON: Over two-thirds of people who try their first cigarette go on to become daily smokers, at least temporarily, a study suggests.
The finding from over 215,000 survey respondents provides strong support for prioritising efforts to reduce cigarette experimentation among adolescents, researchers said.
“This is the first time that the remarkable hold that cigarettes can establish after a single experience has been documented from such a large set of data,” said Professor Peter Hajek from Queen Mary University of London in the UK.
“In the development of any addictive behaviour, the move from experimentation to daily practice is an important landmark, as it implies that a recreational activity is turning into a compulsive need,” said Hajek, who led the study published in the journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research.
“We have found that the conversion rate from ‘first time smoker’ to ‘daily smoker’ is surprisingly high, which helps confirm the importance of preventing cigarette experimentation in the first place,” he said.
The researchers searched the Global Health Data Exchange for relevant surveys from the UK, US, Australia and New Zealand that included questions about ever trying a cigarette and ever smoking daily.
The team calculated that 60.3 per cent of respondents had said they had ever tried a cigarette, and among those, an estimated 68.9 per cent said they had progressed to daily smoking. (AGENCIES)
Follow our WhatsApp channel
