Since middle school you’ve seen or heard all the facts, been forced to watch health videos, or make anti-smoking posters for the hallways. You know all the information, but have you ever considered smoking, even just once?
 Teen smoking, which, according to Washingtonpost.com writer Rob Stein, increased slightly between the years 2003-2005, and this has resulted in a view that “more progress must be made to ensure youngsters at these critical age levels continue to turn away from smoking.”  With 21.9 percent of the student population in the U.S. smoking in 2003, and 23 percent in 2005, the increase, though slight, is still significant enough to worry parents and anti-smoking advocates. According to CNN.com’s article, “Teens and Smoking: What Parents Can Do,” 90 percent of smokers start smoking before age 19, meaning that these kids and teens are developing habits that stick with them for life. Stein’s article continues to say that, in 2008, the statistics on teen smokers have decreased slightly to 20 percent. But the fact still remains that approximately 4.5 million adolescents in the United States are smokers. An anonymous student from Paint Branch High School can attest to these statistics, after confirming she has been smoking since she was 8 years old. She said, “The negative side is that I could never participate in sports,” since smoking had an effect on her daily life.
 Teens who have taken any type of health class in middle school or high school are well aware of the permanent damage smoking can do to their health, even for as short a time as five years.  Another anonymous Paint Branch student confirmed she knew of effects such as “lung cancer, bad breath, yellow teeth, and gum disease,” but she’ll only consider quitting when, “she’s pregnant,” or, “it’s medically suggested, besides the usual.” 
 The attraction to smoking as teens has been blamed on peer pressure, a teenagers desire to be “cooler” or look “sexy” and “mature,” according to the CNN article. But there is no designated reason as to why teens turn to smoking. Another anonymous source from Paint Branch emphasized, “The people I was with most of the time did [smoke],” she said when talking about the cause of her habit. “It was just something I wanted to try.” Senior Chloe Kettel confirmed why she could consider smoking after saying, “I would smoke if I was depressed,” but “not for any other reason.” To say that these students would smoke in order to make themselves seem or feel popular would be untrue. The fact is that these teens are simply curious about what will change in their lives once they light up a cigarette.
 Unfortunately, this innocent curiosity can result in an addiction that is life-changing. The addictive ingredient in cigarettes, nicotine, reaches the brain faster when inhaled than certain drugs that enter the body intravenously, and causes an addiction that is hard to break. Both of the two anonymous teens agreed that they couldn’t “even go one day without it [nicotine],” all because smoking was something that they “just felt like trying.”