Trying just one cigarette leads to a daily habit in majority of people, study suggests

An analysis by researchers at Queen Mary University of London found that trying a single cigarette could lead to a daily smoking habit. The findings were derived from data from more than 215,000 people collected through eight surveys as part of the Global Health Data Exchange, a study published in Nicotine & Tobacco Research. Of roughly 60% of respondents who said they tried a cigarette, almost 70% said they went on to daily smoking. The multiple surveys included in the study used different methodologies, with the confidence interval for the daily smoking finding falling between 60.9% and 76.9%. It is unknown if a single use of an e-cigarette or a single experience vaping would trigger the same reaction, but lead researcher Peter Hajek says it is unlikely, given that those devices may use nicotine-free e-liquids. "The increase in youth experimentation with vaping has been associated with an accelerated decline in smoking, and there could be a link between the two," Hajek notes. The surveys used were published between 2000 and 2016 and comprised English-speaking respondents from developed countries.