少数美国少年有吸烟恶习

Brittany Villarreal wishes she had never smoked. “I want to quit so bad, but it’s hard,” she says. According, to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a non-governmental group that tries to protect children from tobacco addiction and exposure to secondhand smoke, it takes only three cigarettes to become addicted to smoking.

An estimated 22 percent of American high school kids smoke, and according to Cathy Backinger, chief of the Tobacco Control Research Branch at the National Cancer Institute in the United States, approximately one-third of young smokers will eventually die from a smoking-related illness. “Three out of four kids have tried to quit smoking and have failed, and we also know that two out of three say that they wish they never started smoking,” says Ms. Backinger. “I’m trying to hard to quit but it’s always there,” says Brittany. “It’s something that’s going to haunt me for the rest of my life.”

Despite the grim facts about teen smoking, researchers at the University of Michigan say smoking rates among 8th, 10th, and 12th graders in the U.S. are at their lowest level since 1975. They say the percentage of kids smoking today is far below the peak levels seen in the mid-1990s. Contributing to that decrease is the high cost of cigarettes, the success of anti-smoking advertisement campaigns, and aggressive school education programs.

One school in the Northeastern state of Maine is targeting kids as young as elementary school, before they are tempted by their first cigarette. “I learned you shouldn’t smoke, even if you see other people doing it.” Declining numbers of young smokers is good news because it means there likely will be fewer adult smokers in the decades ahead.

布列塔尼·维拉利尔希望她没有学会抽烟。她说，“我非常想戒烟，但是很难。” 儿童远离烟草运动是一个保护孩子免于吸烟成瘾或间接吸烟的非政府组织，根据他们的说法，吸烟上瘾只需要3根香烟。

有22％的美国高中生吸烟，美国癌症学院香烟控制研究所的凯茜·贝金娜所说，大约三分之一的年轻的吸烟者会死于与吸烟有关联的疾病。布列塔尼说，“四分之三的孩子们曾经尝试戒烟，但最后以失败告终，而且，三分之二的人说，他们希望他们没有开始吸烟。”贝金娜女士说，“我很努力地尝试，但是还是没有成功。好像我的下半辈子都逃脱不了。”

虽然少年人吸烟的情况很严重，密歇根大学的研究者们却称，美国现在8年级、10年级和12年级的学生们吸烟的比率是1975年来最低的。他们说，现在孩子们吸烟的比率远低于90年代中期的最高峰。造成这种现象的原因在于香烟价格的高昂、反吸烟运动的成功和成功的学校教育。

缅因州东北的一所学校把还未受到香烟诱惑的小学生作为教育的对象。“即使看到别人在吸烟，我也知道不应该吸烟，。”年轻的吸烟人数的减少是个好消息，因为这意味着未来的十年内，成人吸烟者会减少。