COOL, FUN, AND VERY ADDICTIVE

KIDS recognize them, but parents are clueless. So it's time for a
little public education on the subject of bidis, the tiny, imported,
fruit-flavored, hand-rolled cigarettes that are becoming alarmingly
popular among teens.

Bidis are known as the "poor man's smoke" in India, where they are
hand-rolled in sweatshops by women and children who earn about 10
cents for rolling 1,000 a day.

Despite their lowly origins, bidis became fashionable on college
campuses a few years ago and have since spread to high schools and
middle schools. They taste a little like candy, look a little like
marijuana joints and are thought to be safer than regular cigarettes.
No wonder they're cool. But the slim, brown cigarettes are actually
more dangerous than American smokes, with higher concentrations of
nicotine, tar, carbon monoxide, ammonia and other toxic substances.

Bidis are sold in convenience stores, liquor stores and tobacco shops
for about $2.50 for a pack of 20 or 25. It's illegal to sell them to
minors, but one group of San Francisco teens found they could buy them
in 24 percent of the stores they surveyed. State officials don't like
bidis because they often are smuggled in untaxed and don't carry
required health warnings.

But the worst thing about these little cigarettes is that they give
the tobacco industry something it wants but can't produce itself: an
entry-level cigarette designed for kids, a tool for hooking teens on
the tobacco habit. Just as wine coolers and peach brandy make alcohol
agreeable to young palates, vanilla- and strawberry-flavored bidis
make smoking tasty and fun. And they are just as addictive as regular
cigarettes.

This week came the good news that cigarette sales are down 30 percent
in California since the Proposition 10 tobacco tax went into effect
Jan. 1. While it's possible that smokers are still puffing on the
stash they stockpiled before the new tax or are buying cigarettes on
the Internet, there's no doubt that fewer adults are smoking these
days.

Unfortunately, smoking is still on the rise among children. One study
found that the percentage of California kids who smoke regularly rose
from 9 to 11 between 1994 and 1996. That was before the bidi craze
hit, giving the tobacco industry new ammunition in its fight to hook
another generation of smokers.