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As a result, once-promising students may find learning more difficult and may even struggle to pass tests that they once would have easily aced. Though the impact isn’t devastating enough to fully reduce a person’s mental capacity, it could cause subtle, but noticeable, losses in mental focus when a teen most needs it. Even worse, it could stop emotional growth in many ways. Adolescents are Impacted the Most Although these emotional and intellectual issues are common in everybody who smokes or uses nicotine, they are worse in teens or even younger children. That’s because the brain is still developing even into a person’s early twenties. The brain needs all of the help

PARENTS’ EXAMPLE

Parental smoking may make teen behaviors even worse. Multiple studies have investigated the parental influence on teen smoking. The results of these studies have been mixed. A few studies have found that teens whose parents are smokers are no more likely to be smokers as adults than are those whose parents did not smoke. A majority of the scientific studies, however, have found that teenagers whose parents smoke are much more likely to become smokers when they are adults than are the children of nonsmokers. Most researchers conclude that the social acceptance of tobacco use that is inherent in a smoking parent, combined with easier access to cigarettes or other nicotine products, make it easier for teenagers whose parents smoke to justify their own experimentation with nicotine products.

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Nicotine: Negative Effects on the Adolescent Brain