A new study says that tobacco marketing and depictions of smoking in movies promote youth smoking.

The report released by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) revealed that smoking prevention campaigns sponsored by the tobacco industry are generally ineffective and may even increase youth smoking.

"There is now incontrovertible evidence that marketing of tobacco, and the depiction of smoking in the movies, promote youth smoking and can cause young people to begin smoking," said University of Minnesota professor Barbara Loken and one of the report's five scientific editors.

The report concluded tobacco advertising targets psychological needs of adolescents, such as popularity and peer acceptance. Advertising creates the perception that smoking satisfies these needs.

Moreover, brief exposure to tobacco advertising influences adolescents' perceptions about smoking, smokers, and adolescents' intentions to smoke.

The report also said that depiction of cigarette smoking is pervasive in movies, within 75 percent or more of contemporary box-office hits, with identifiable brands in about one-third of movies.

(HealthDay News) The risk of stroke for a young woman smoker is directly related to the number of cigarettes she smokes, a new study finds.

While smoking has been clearly established as increasing the risk of stroke, "there is not a lot of data out there on the actual dose response," said Dr. John Cole, the study's corresponding author and an assistant professor of neurology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore.

Cole and his colleagues interviewed 466 women who had had a stroke, and also 604 women who hadn't. All were between the ages of 15 and 49, and were either smokers, non-smokers or former smokers.

Any smoking at all doubles the risk of stroke, the study found. The risk was 2.2 times greater for women smoking one to 10 cigarettes a day, 4.3 times greater for those smoking 21 to 39 cigarettes a day, and 9.1 times greater for those smoking two packs a day or more, compared to nonsmokers.

It could all be traced back to that first puff. The physical and emotional reaction to the first attempt at smoking a cigarette might be linked to a gene that dictates the likelihood and level of addiction, smoking frequency, and chances of it resulting in lung cancer. While the gene is not an excuse, it could certainly explain quite a few things, not to mention lead to programs that keep people from ever experimenting with that first drag.

It is estimated that approximately 40 million Americans smoke cigarettes, a habit that is attributed to nearly 500,000 deaths per year. Cigarettes are consistently named in studies and medical research as the number one preventable cause of death each year in the United States. Those are some statistics that can take a moment to process, especially for smokers themselves.

Based on multiple genetic studies, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and their colleagues at the University of Utah have found that if youth don’t begin daily smoking before age 17, they are dramatically less likely to ever become severely addicted to nicotine. The findings were published in the July 11, 2008, issue of the Public Library of Science Genetics journal.

“This finding suggests we can protect our younger generations from some of the massive risks associated with tobacco dependence if we can prevent them from daily smoking before the age of 17,” said Tim Baker, Ph.D. and lead researcher at the University of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention (UW-CTRI).