CDC FALLING SHORT IN BID TO REDUCE SMOKING RATE

ATLANTA - Despite years of anti-smoking campaigns, lawsuits and bans, the
smoking rate among American adults has hardly budged during the 1990s -
because more and more 18- to 24-year-olds are lighting up.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday that
24.7% of adults smoked in 1997. As a result, the CDC expects to fall far
short of its goal of reducing smoking to 15% of the adult population by 2000.

"During the 1990s we've made virtually no progress whatsoever," said
Michael Eriksen, director of the CDC Office of Smoking and Health. "The
fact that we can't get rates below 25% really speaks to the addictive power
of nicotine."

About 48 million adults smoked cigarettes in 1997, according to a CDC
survey that year of more than 35,000 people nationwide. The rate was the
same--24.7%--in 1995. It was 25.5% in 1990.

Among most adult age groups, smoking rates actually declined from 1990 to
1997, but the percentage of smokers ages 18 to 24 increased during that
period, from 24.5% to 28.7%. U.S. smoking rates have dropped drastically
since 1965, when 44% of adults were lighting up.

Over the following quarter of a century, more health warnings came out,
tobacco ads were banned from the airwaves and no-smoking signs appeared in
restaurants, offices and airplanes. Rather than continuing to decline,
however, smoking rates leveled off during the 1990s. At the same time,
public awareness campaigns continued to warn of the dangers of smoking. The
patch and nicotine gum went on the market. And states sued tobacco
companies to recoup the cost of treating sick smokers.

Philip Morris, the nation's largest tobacco company, had no comment on the
CDC report. Health officials anticipate a drop in smoking rates in 1999
because cigarette makers raised their prices after their $206-billion legal
settlement with 46 states.