Cigarette smoking among American teenagers dropped to a record low in 2012, according to a national study released Wednesday.
The annual survey of about 45,000 students in the eighth, 10th, and 12th grades found that the number of teens who reported smoking cigarettes in the prior 30 days fell to 10.6 percent this year from 11.7 percent in 2011 the lowest number recorded since the survey began in 1975.
"A one percentage point decline may not sound like a lot, but it represents about a 9 percent reduction in a single year in the number of teens currently smoking," Lloyd Johnston, the principal investigator in the study, said in a statement.
The researchers cited the increase in federal cigarette taxes, raised by 62 cents a pack in 2009, as a likely contributing factor. The findings were part of an annual survey by University of Michigan researchers released by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Use of smokeless tobacco products has also fallen among teenagers in the past two years, with 7.9 percent of 12th graders reporting they used such products in the prior 30 days in 2012.
There was however, an uptick in binge drinking reported by 12th graders in addition to the nonmedical use of the prescription drug Adderall. Furthermore, more than 40 percent of high-school seniors reported alcohol use in the prior 30 days and about 25 percent reported using illicit drugs, predominantly marijuana.
ACSH s Dr. Gilbert Ross took comfort in the data, generally: Smoking is by far the riskiest long-term behavior teens can take up, so the significant decline in cigarette uptake will definitely be reflected in better health outcome in years to come. Binge drinking and using powerful drugs such as Adderall recreationally will counter that salutary trend, unfortunately, and in a much shorter time-frame.