Tobacco: addiction appears much earlier than we think

The symptoms of nicotine dependence appear very quickly after the first puff of a cigarette, well before the establishment of a regular cigarette smoking, say the authors of a study on young Quebecois, whose results are published in the journal "Canadian Medical Association Journal."

It is generally in adolescence, smoking is taking place gradually and sequentially, in different stages ranging from preparatory period during which interest is established for cigarettes, dependence physiological, say the authors.

It is estimated that the growth of the first "puff" of daily cigarette smoking takes two to three years, but it takes a little longer to become addicted. However, the lack of success of tobacco control programs among young people led the authors to question whether this inefficiency is not due to the incomplete understanding of the reasons and circumstances that encourage young people to start smoking.

They therefore conducted a study to describe the temporal sequence of twelve steps involved in the process of tobacco dependence and the time between each.

To do this, they used data from 311 young people enrolled in a prospective study conducted at McGill University in Montreal involving 1293 students recruited while they were in college and followed for nearly five years.

The results show that inhalation of cigarette smoke soon after the first puff of tobacco involved a month and a half later. Appear shortly after the first symptoms of nicotine dependence, although not established until a weekly or daily smoking.

Mental addiction is itself concomitant with being completely smoke a cigarette, occurring even some before the first cigarette, "which reflects a high susceptibility to smoking," say the authors.

Withdrawal symptoms occur very rapidly after smoking the monthly smoking, about eleven months of the first puff, tolerance to thirteen months and the introduction of a weekly smoking about 19 months. Young people start smoking every day two years after tasting their first cigarette, actually becoming addicted to less than three and a half years of it.

Girls seem much more sensitive to the effects of tobacco related significantly more symptoms of nicotine addiction as young men, the researchers found.

In addition, the smoking on a monthly basis does not mitigate these effects slightly, with 57% of participants reported smoking than monthly an urge to smoke, 41% need while attending a stop program 44% acknowledged a mental addiction and physical addiction 33% respectively against 93%, 83%, 82% and 89% of daily smokers.

"The first puff is the beginning of a process that quickly leads to symptoms of nicotine dependence and escalation of consumption among some young smokers," according to the researchers.

They therefore believe that "young people, their parents and health professionals should be aware that symptoms of nicotine dependence can occur long before the establishment of regular smoking and once experienced the missing the likelihood of progress toward a daily consumption to tobacco dependence is greatly increased. "

For Jonathan D. Klein, his point of view in a commentary on the review "data reported by Dr. Gervais and colleagues provide new evidence important that the best thing to do for young people, is not to start smoking. " It also reinforces the idea that health authorities should provide the means to prevent young people from starting to smoke and to protect against tobacco, as well as its passive form only through the images in the media.