Smoking By Kids Up

Smoking By Kids Up - Again!

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG, New York Times

For years, public health officials have pointed to low smoking rates among black teen-agers as a hopeful sign that at least some young people were shunning cigarettes. Today, that optimism all but disappeared as a new study found that cigarette use among African-American high school students jumped 80 percent since 1991. The nationwide survey found that from 1991, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began the study, to 1997, smoking rates increased by a third among all high school students. Forty-three percent used cigarettes, cigars or smokeless tobacco in the month before the survey; a surprising 22 percent had smoked cigars during that time.

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But it was the sharp rise in black youths' smoking rates, which other studies showed to have dropped sharply in the 1970's and 1980's, that experts found most troubling. While white high school students smoke at nearly twice the rate of blacks, the gap has narrowed steadily in the 90's and some experts predict that it will close in the next decade.

"As we entered the 1990's, there was a three to fourfold difference between smoking in white and black teens," said Dr. Michael Eriksen, director of the Office on Smoking and Health at the disease control centers in Atlanta. "That was a public health success story, and what we are finding now is that success is eroding right before our eyes."

The survey, which will appear in Friday's issue of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, offered no explanation for the trend, although Dr. Eriksen and others said several factors were probably at work: the stable price of cigarettes; the glamorization of tobacco products, particularly cigars, in the movies and on television; and tobacco marketing directed at African-Americans, including T-shirts, ball caps and other promotional giveaways.

"Everyone was saying, 'Why aren't blacks smoking?' and the industry started saying that too," said Dr. John Pierce, director of cancer prevention at the University of California at San Diego. "Blacks are going to start increasing rapidly now, because they are marketing heavy duty to blacks now, the same as whites."

Some young African-Americans, interviewed around Washington Square Park in Manhattan, seemed to agree today.

"You see the sneakers, the hats," said Andre Johnson, a 13-year-old who does not smoke. "The people on the billboards look very young. People think it's cool. All rappers smoke."

While officials at the disease control centers said the study was not timed to capitalize on the Senate debate, supporters of the legislation said the timing could not be better.

"This study is going to dramatically put more pressure on Congress to act this year," said Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. "It demonstrates that despite all of the headlines, we are losing the only war that counts, and that is the decision of children to use tobacco."

Last year's survey was the first to measure cigar use. Its findings, that 3 of 10 boys and 1 out of 10 girls had smoked a cigar in the past month, bolstered that of another study by the centers, released last May. It reported that one-quarter of all boys and girls ages 14 to 19 had smoked a cigar in the previous year. Those numbers were so surprising that even some experts doubted them.

Tobacco use was highest among non-Hispanic white students; more than half of white boys had used some form of tobacco in the month before the survey, a figure Dr. Eriksen described as "the most pathetic statistic." In keeping with that trend, cigarette smoking was also most prevalent among white students; 39.7 percent reported cigarette use, an increase from 30.9 percent in 1991.

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