“The only real way to tackle youth smoking is to make it no longer seem like the norm in adult society. That means more smoke-free places, no tobacco advertising and more adults quitting.”
New research from Sapparo in Japan sugge that young people who smoke start to suffer significant damage to their hearts and blood vessels at a much earlier age than had previously been thought.An advanced new scanning technique revealed that smokers aged between 18 and 35 showed signs of damage associated with coronary heart disease even though they appeared healthy on standard cardiac diagnostic tests. Most previous research had suggested that such effects began to accumulate in a significant way only after many years of smoking.