STUDY DETAILS SMOKING FAD AMONG YOUTH

BOSTON -- Warning of a worrisome new trend in smoking among young people,
Massachusetts health officials released the country's first official study
on Thursday on the prevalence among teen-agers of smoking skinny,
sweet-flavored and highly potent cigarettes called bidis that are
hand-rolled in India and faddishly popular.

The study, whose results are highly approximate because they were not based
on a rigorously random sample, found that among 642 teen-agers in the
Boston inner city surveyed this spring, 40 percent had tried a bidi
(pronounced beedee), nearly 16 percent smoked bidis currently and nearly 8
percent were "heavy users" who had smoked more than 100.

"These are very disturbing findings that I believe have national
importance," said Dr. Howard K. Koh, the Massachusetts Commissioner of
Public Health.

The State Department of Public Health also announced that a separate study
it undertook on the content of bidis found that contrary to the seeming
natural innocence of their leaf-wrapped looks the cigarettes could contain
five times the tar and three times the nicotine of conventional cigarettes.
The bidi fad particularly concerns health officials and opponents of
smoking because they say the Indian cigarettes seem tailor-made to attract
young smokers. At about $2 a pack, bidis are often cheaper than
conventional cigarettes, and they are available in more than a dozen
flavors, including mint and strawberry.

"The flavors are obviously meant for children," said Alyonik Hrushow,
director of the Tobacco Free Project of the San Francisco Department of
Public Health. "Adults don't usually want to smoke mango-flavored cigarettes."

The trouble is not only the appeal of the flavors, Ms. Hrushow said, but
also the misapprehensions of many young people about the cigarettes
themselves.

"A lot of youth are not aware that they actually contain more nicotine than
regular cigarettes," she said. "Because they're wrapped in a leaf and sort
of sold as being natural, they think that it's somehow safer, and it's
almost like a little underground sort of behavior."

Because bidis resemble marijuana joints, some young smokers enjoy an extra
air of rebellion when they puff them in public; bidis also tend to go out
frequently because the leaf they are rolled in does not burn well,
requiring frequent relighting and deep inhaling that add to what some see
as an impressive ritual.

In India, bidis are considered cigarettes for the poor, and can be bought
for a few cents per pack; they are not flavored there and are generally
hand-rolled by indigent women and, according to some reports, children. In
some of the earliest work done on bidi sales in the United States,
teen-agers at the Tobacco Free Project performed a survey of stores last
year that found that bidis were significantly easier for under-age smokers
to buy than conventional cigarettes and that most packs failed to carry the
usual warning label of the dangers of tobacco.

The teen-agers have complained to the Federal Trade Commission and the
United States Customs Service, Ms. Hrushow said.

Massachusetts health officials will push for tougher checks on whether
stores are selling bidis to under-age smokers and for tougher labeling
practices, said Dr. Koh, the public health commissioner. The state will
also ask the Treasury Department to determine whether child labor is being
used to produce bidis, which would make it illegal to import them. Health
officials said the Boston survey was only a beginning, statistically,
because it was carried out on a "convenient" sample of youth -- teen-agers
who were willing to speak when approached in inner-city Boston
neighborhoods -- rather than a carefully random sample. The survey was
released today in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's weekly
report. "These results will have to be supported in follow-up studies," Dr.
Koh said, "but I think this is a warning shot."

The bidi trend among youth appears to have begun in California several
years ago and headed eastward, showing up especially in areas known as
heights of hipdom, like the East Village.

Two young anti-smoking advocates who helped perform the Boston survey,
Jwuanita Core and Jennifer Veerasammy, said that when they asked teens why
they smoked bidis, the answers often included a fondness for the head-rush
the potent cigarettes produced.

The replies, Ms. Core said, also included "they taste better"; "they were
cheaper"; "they were safer and easier to buy than cigarettes." And some
said, "I like the flavor."