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Tobacco use among teens have fallen in the last couple years, but rates remain buoyed by the popularity of e-cigarettes. According to the CDC, roughly 1 in 4 high school students have reported using a tobacco product in the last 30 days.
Still, smoking is a fixture for teen culture. We’ve known for a while that part of this has simply to do with the fact that younger brains aren’t fully developed—and the parts of the brain that are designed to control impulse and assess risks properly just have not matured. More recently, we’re learning which specific parts of the brain seem to be undercooked during adolescence—which may, in fact, open up the key to reversing some of these trends and reducing teen smoking rates across the world.
In a new study published in Nature Communications on Tuesday, British and Chinese researchers found that gray matter volume in the brain is linked to a desire to smoke during adolescence. In fact, it also seems to affect exactly how strong nicotine addiction feels.