'Tackle football is like smoking'

A gut-wrenching public service announcement shows youth football players in crisp uniforms puffing on cigarettes, comparing tackle ball to smoking because both do more damage the earlier kids start.

In the case of football, that's brain damage, linked to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, the devastating disease thought to have driven late NFL player Aaron Hernandez to suicide in 2017.

Similarly, the lungs never grow to their full potential if you start smoking before age 25, when they stop developing.

CTE is cause by repeated head traumas, and brains don't bounce back from injury as well under the age of 12, studies suggest.

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