New study shows most people who try cigarettes become regular smokers

Around two-thirds of people who try their first cigarette go on to become daily smokers, at least temporarily.

This is according to a new analysis of survey data from Queen Mary University of London, which looked at responses from more than 215,000 participants in the Global Health Data Exchange to find out how many of those who tried a cigarette went on to smoke daily.

It was shown that 60.3 percent of respondents had ever tried a cigarette, with an estimated 68.9 percent of these progressing to daily smoking. Since the different surveys used a range of methodologies, this estimated conversion rate was assigned a margin of error, meaning it could be as low as 60.9 percent and as high as 76.9 percent.

This suggests that part of the reduction in smoking prevalence observed over the past 20 years is likely due to reduced experimentation with cigarettes among adolescents. It was also shown that very few non-smokers who tried e-cigarettes became daily vapers.

Lead researcher Professor Peter Hajek, from Queen Mary University of London, said: "This is the first time that the remarkable hold that cigarettes can establish after a single experience has been documented from such a large set of data."

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