Survey: Rhode Island children among the least likely to smoke

PROVIDENCE – Rhode Island children are the second-least likely in the country to have tried smoking cigarettes by the age of 13, behind only Utah, according to the National Youth Risk Behavior Survey recently released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The percent of Rhode Island children younger than 13 to have ever tried a cigarette according to the survey was 28.6. Utah’s rate was 17.9 percent.
At 48.8 percent, Arkansas’ percent of children younger than 13 to have tried smoking at least once was the highest in the nation.
Separate data for children younger than 13 to have smoked a whole cigarette showed Rhode Island children to be third-least likely in the country to have done so, in a tie, at 5.6 percent, with New Jersey. Massachusetts children were second-least likely, at 5.4 percent, to have smoked a whole cigarette before the age of 13.
Utah, where anti-smoking religious doctrine is generally strong, again scored the best rate on the second metric, with only 3.7 percent of its children to have smoked a whole cigarette before the age of 13. •

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