TEEN SMOKING RATE PLUMMETS DRUG USE FALLS OFF AS WELL, STUDY SHOWS --
EDUCATION CREDITED

Cigarette smoking, the leading cause of preventable death and disease
in the United States, is falling sharply among American teenagers,
researchers reported yesterday.

At the same time, the study showed, the use of the hallucinogen
ecstasy is increasing at a slower rate than it has previously, while
use of such other drugs as LSD, crack and other forms of cocaine is
below a late-1990s peak, the study showed. But although the use of
cocaine by adolescents is at a level below that of recent years, only
10th-graders showed a decline in usage this year.

While researchers say the statistics reported yesterday in the annual
Monitoring the Future survey are optimistic, the Campaign for
Tobacco-Free Kids in Washington, D.C., cautioned that 1,183,994
children had become regular smokers in 2001. It estimated that
378,878 of them will eventually die from their habit.

"The good news from this report must be tempered," said the group's
president, Matthew L. Myers. "Smoking rates have only declined to the
levels that existed 10 years ago. It's important to remember that
despite this good news, 5,000 kids will still try their first
cigarette today, and another 2,000 kids will become regular, daily
smokers, one-third of whom will die prematurely as a result."

The study released was based on a nationally representative survey of
about 44,000 students in eighth, 10th and 12th grades and included
students in 424 public and private secondary schools.

The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids noted that the study showed that
states with strong anti-tobacco programs, such as the one in
California, the nation's first, and Arizona, Florida and Maine, had
the biggest drops in the smoking rate.

Florida has reduced smoking by eighth-graders by 43 percent since
1998, 29 percent among high school juniors and 19 percent of seniors,
as compared with national rates in those grades that dropped 36, 23
and 16 percent. Maine also showed steep declines.

The picture is also good in California, said Ken August, spokesman
for the California Department of Health Services. He said the state's
latest figures showed that only 7.1 percent of California teenagers
smoked, down from a peak of 12.1 percent in 1995.

He attributed the drop, which parallels a 21 percent drop in adult
smoking in the past decade, to the state's aggressive anti-smoking
campaign, approved by voters in 1989.

"Clearly, the states with the most comprehensive tobacco prevention
programs are driving much of the national decline in youth smoking,"
the campaign's Myers said.

California's $134 million anti-tobacco program is funded by the
25-cents-a-pack Proposition 99, added to the cost of smoking and
funds from the 1998 settlement, in which big tobacco agreed to pay
the states $368 billion in health-related damages, tear down
billboards and quit advertising to kids through gimmicks like Joe
Camel. Critics say, however, that tobacco advertising and promotions
in outlets attractive to adolescents have substantially increased
since them.

Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine at the University of
California at San Francisco, fears budget cuts will slow down
progress made since the tobacco education campaigns started.

In a paper earlier this month, he said California could reduce the
number of smokers to as little as 10 percent of the population in
five years, saving 50,000 lives from heart attacks prevented during
that period.

"We know how to rapidly reduce smoking and immediately save lives,"
Glantz said. "But politicians around the country are using the
current budget difficulties as an excuse to gut these effective
programs."

He said health advocates were fighting major cuts in tobacco control
programs in Florida, Ohio, Hawaii, Arizona and elsewhere "and they
are waiting to see whether California Gov. Davis acts to reinvigorate
(the state's) program or cut it."