Ten cigarette advertisements are enough to influence teenagers by 40 percent to start smoking, states a latest study.
The research found that every 10 tobacco advertisements increase the chances of making teenagers daily smoker by 30 percent and occasional smokers by 40 percent.
Over 1,300 German children who did not smoke were studied for the research. All were aged between 10 and 15. The researchers monitored the behavior of the participants for 30 months after their exposure to the tobacco ads.
The study found that one-third of the youngsters confessed to trying to smoke and 10 percent said they smoked within the previous month. Five percent of the participants were classified as established smokers as they smoked over 100 cigarettes in the follow-up period and some of them smoked every day. Around one-third of the daily smokers were below or 14 years of age and only one-quarter were 16 or older. Teenagers who saw around 11 to 15 ads of tobacco for 30 months twice likely became daily smokers.
According to Dr Matthis Morgenstern of the Institute for Therapy and Health Research in Kiel, the study supports calls for ban on tobacco advertising initiated by the World Health Organization.
"Data from this study support this measure, because only exposure to tobacco advertisements predicted smoking initiation, which cannot be attributed to a general receptiveness to marketing," the researchers wrote.
After the observations of the overall study, the researchers stated that depending on the number of tobacco ads a teenager had seen, the risk of becoming an established smoker was 3 percent to 7 percent higher, and the risk of becoming a daily smoker was 3 percent to 6 percent greater.
