Age of initiation
It appears that in addition to fewer youth starting to smoke over time, fewer youth are initiating smoking in their early teens. Rather, youth are continuing to pick up the habit throughout adolescence; in the past few years, more youth smoked their first cigarette after age 15 than earlier. In 2020, the mean age at which ever-smokers age 25 and older had smoked their first cigarette was 16.5a.
95% confidence intervals for in-text estimates
a: 16.5 [16.3-16.6]