Youth Not Heeding Antismoking Messages

Teenagers harbor some dangerous misperceptions about smoking, and young adults are still taking too many chances with cigarettes.

Those are the claims of two studies that appear in the October issue of Pediatrics.

One study discovered that adolescents believe they are less likely to develop lung cancer or have a heart attack or other smoking-related problems if they smoke light cigarettes.

In the second report, researchers found that more than half of college-age smokers are "social smokers," meaning they typically smoke with others rather than alone. Such smoking can still lead to a full-fledged habit, the authors stated.

Light cigarettes are routinely marketed as safer than regular cigarettes and as an intermediate step towards quitting even though there is no evidence to support these claims, said the authors of the first study.

Albert Einstein Healthcare Network