[Smoking in teenagers: a priority issue]

In France, the age that young people light up the first cigarette is particularly early, and thus in terms of public health tobacco use among the youth represents a high stake in the epidemiological projections of the mortality rate of illnesses linked to tobacco for the next twenty years. Measures to "deregulate" tobacco in society must intensify in association with programs that assist the breaking of tobacco dependence among those who have already begun to smoke. In adolescents, the best known treatment is to never start smoking, and to achieve this, what is needed are information campaigns on health education, well-adapted and solidly anchored in the public school curriculum, as well as the accompanying application of existing "deregulation" measures.