Tobacco companies know that young people who become addicted to tobacco may use it for their lifetimes. Because of that, they have targeted advertising to young people and teenagers. Since most adult tobacco users started as teens or younger, the focus of many medical professionals and publichealth officials is to prevent young people from ever starting.

Despite the health warnings on cigarettes and all the new antismoking education and advertisements over three thousand young people start smoking every day. More than one thousand of those will become addicted to nicotine, and over 70 percent will regret ever having started before they were eighteen. Mona Vanek, a historian and writer, says, "[I] struggled to learn [to smoke] from 16 until I was 19, and then, for years and years I could only stand the awful taste if I was chewing mint gum. Boy, what...