Last week marked the first visible signs of the Food and Drug Administration’s new authority over the tobacco industry, passing a ban on candy-, fruit- and clove-flavored cigarettes with the aim of curbing underage smoking in America.

“Almost 90 percent of adult smokers start smoking as teenagers,” FDA Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg said in announcing the ban. “These flavored cigarettes are a gateway for many children and young adults to become regular smokers.”

So, cigarette manufacturers stop producing these evil “gateway” cigarettes and suddenly teenage smoking will drop off the map?

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.

Despite the FDA’s commendable intent, the ban is likely to do little without the inclusion of menthol cigarettes, according to the American Legacy Foundation, which today constitaute roughly 44 percent of the cigarettes smoked by teenagers aged 12 to 17.

This in itself will prove particularly challenging for FDA officials due to the flavor’s substantial adult following.

“Any proposed legislation should consider the special problems of menthol and its relationship to high cigarette consumption, especially for African-American adolescents,” said University of Georgia researchers Jerome Legge and Jessica Muilenburg.

A ban could create an illegal market for those cigarettes.

But the problems don’t stop there.

Even if these bans were to take effect there would be nothing to stop potential underage smokers from picking up a pack of standard cigarettes or flavored cigarette substitutes such as cigarillos, which are only distinguishable from regular cigarettes by its tobacco leaf, rather than paper, wrappings.

Regrettably, there is no easy fix for illegal underage smoking, as further preventative efforts only serve to increase the risk and therefore “cool” attraction of the activity.

Consider alcohol consumption in America today. Despite increased police efforts and possession penalties, high school and college students have little trouble obtaining alcohol when they want it.

As a result, alcohol is glorified in the eyes of underage drinkers and is often experimented with under unsafe conditions. Binge drinking is common and socially accepted or encouraged by friends and fellow partygoers.

Compare this to underage drinking in Italy, where the “legal” drinking age is 16, and the unspoken drinking age is “old enough to walk up to the counter and ask for a beer.”

However, as Dr. Enrico Tempesta of the Italian Observatory on Alcohol and Youth explains, “There are protective cultural factors in Italy.

Here, children and teenagers disapprove and tend to exclude from their circle a contemporary who gets drunk.”

As a result, the country boasts a relatively low level of alcohol-related problems despite high rate of consumption.

Perhaps we should spend more time crafting ways to make cigarette smoke more culturally unappealing to middle and high school students, rather than finding new ways to scandalize the product.

So what can we do, as current and future parents, to prevent our kids from smoking?

Even the little things count.

According to more than a decade of research by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, children who have family dinners more than three times a week are less likely to smoke, drink or use drugs.

We must not forget the crucial role parents have in shaping their children’s “culture.”

That’s something worth more than all the FDA bans in the world.

Hal Cohen is old enough to buy an unlimited supply of cancer at a gas station, but can’t order a glass of wine with dinner.

Lend him your fake ID at hscohen@asu.edu.