NICOTINE replacement therapy will be prescribed for children as young as 12 across Scotland to help them quit smoking under official NHS guidance.

Every GP surgery and chemist is being sent an update on good practice which includes offering nicotine patches and gum to teenagers.

Officials say adolescents, who may think they are just "social smokers", are becoming addicted and have just as much right to the treatment as adults. However, there is some scepticism about the effectiveness of NRT on youths with trials reporting little impact.

Professor John Britton, an epidemiologist at Nottingham University, who is one of the few people to have compared teenagers' techniques to quit, said: "A lot of young kids are still in the experimental stage. Levels of dependence in children are probably not as high as in established adult smokers."

Concern that teenagers may become hooked on NRT itself - because their brains are still developing, thus making them more vulnerable to addiction - was one of the reasons why the treatment was not originally recommended for the age group.

However, after research the Committee on the Safety of Medicines approved its use in 12 to 18-year-olds, as well as pregnant women who are struggling to give up, at the end of 2005.

Evidence suggests that these measures have not automatically been adopted by all Scotland's family doctors.

Dr Linda Bauld, a tobacco researcher who is investigating smoking cessation services north of the border, said: "One of the things that is emerging is that general practitioners in particular are still very reluctant to prescribe NRT to pregnant women or young people. For them, it is very useful to have new guidance that makes it very clear that this is acceptable and appropriate rather than practitioners being concerned about risks which we know are not there any more."

This month, the health education agency NHS Health Scotland is issuing the update on smoking cessation guidance to help standardise treatment across the country.

It includes the latest information on quitting products and when to refer patients to cessation services.

It also states that NRT can be used by 12 to 18-year-olds, adding: "Studies indicate that NRT was as well tolerated by teenagers as it is in adults and would certainly be safer than smoking. There was no evidence that indicated adolescents would abuse/misuse NRT."

Ann Kerr, programme manager for NHS Health Scotland, said that encouraging adolescents to quit was a difficult job.

Last year, a report on pilot projects to help Scottish teenagers stop smoking said just 3% had given up after a year. Although there has been some drop in the number of youths who take up the habit, one of the most recent Scottish surveys estimated 6% of 13-year-olds and 19% of 15-year-olds were regular smokers.

Ms Kerr said: "We know that young people do not realise they are addicted until they try to stop. They think they are social smokers who just smoke with their pals."

Michael Hunt, who is tobacco network co-ordinator for NHS Ayrshire and Arran, said: "Smoking cessation services are, on the whole, not taken up by young people so we are constantly looking at ways we can tackle this hard-to-reach group.

"Here in Ayrshire we are running groups in some of the schools that are incentive-based. I am particularly pleased to see the new changes in licensing of NRT to young people as this is another means of help we can provide."