AS YOUTHS LIGHT UP, HEALTH ACTIVISTS FUME OVER BIDIS

Tobacco: The sweet flavored, readily available cigarettes are the rage
among underage smokers. Officials warn that they pose greater risks than
regular brands.

Ask 16 year old Anna why she smokes bidi cigarettes and she'll glance down
at her clunky platform sandals, look up knowingly and smile: They're the
latest trend. They give a real buzz, adds 15 year old Erika, with her
pierced navel and lace trimmed tank top. Strawberry bidis are best, say the
two friends, lounging at a Starbucks after a day at the Huntington Beach
pier. Or maybe the vanilla ones. "A cigarette calms you down," Anna said.
"Bidis have a nice rush to them. I think it's the closest thing to illegal
drugs you can buy legally."

Actually, like all cigarettes, the imported bidis cannot be legally sold to
those under 18. But that hardly seems to be impeding some teenagers.

Bidis, which resemble marijuana joints and come in flavors like mango, wild
cherry and chocolate, have become so popular among urban youths that
alarmed health experts are warning that they are more dangerous than
regular cigarettes.

Later this month, a study expected to be published in the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report will
show that bidis contain five times the tar and three times the nicotine of
name brand cigarettes.

Anti tobacco activists also fear that their candy like appeal will lure
youths into smoking, as did the now outlawed Joe Camel. "I think bidis
have the potential of being a very serious health threat," said Cassandra
Welch, manager of state government relations for the American Lung Assn.
"They're obviously targeting a younger generation of smokers first time
smokers. It's a way to get them hooked into a lifetime of addiction."

Bidis (sometimes spelled beedies or beadies) are hand rolled, often
unfiltered cigarettes filled with finely flaked tobacco bundled in a fuzzy
leaf and bound tight with a colored thread. Imported from India, the
stubby sticks are about half the diameter of major brand cigarettes. But,
public health officials warn, bidis can pack twice the cancer causing punch.

Caught off guard by the trend, public health officials from Massachusetts
to California are scrambling to produce accurate data on bidi usage and
find ways to warn teenagers about their health dangers.

Arizona has specifically banned the sale of bidis to minors. Federal trade
officials are cracking down on bidi packages without warning labels.

Bidis are "gaining rapid popularity among urban youth in the U.S.," said
Dr. Howard Koh, health commissioner of Massachusetts, whose Public Health
Department is about to publish a study of bidi use among 650 urban
teenagers that cites a "disturbingly high" level of bidi smoking.

"This is a problem for communities," Koh said. "It's a problem for urban
youth. It's a problem for communities of color." Despite the concern,
teenagers say bidis are easy to procure: You can get them as party favors
or buy them at swap meets. Some convenience and tobacco stores sell them
for $2.50 to $4 a pack, up to a dollar less than conventional brands. Some
teenagers and young adults mistakenly believe bidis pose less health risk
than such cigarettes as Camels or Marlboros because they're "natural."

Youths from the Huntington Beach pier to Atlanta's Little Five Points
neighborhood appear blithely oblivious to the health risk. Trend seekers,
including college students, hip hop devotees, neohippies, surfers and
skaters, view them as an exotic conversation piece nothing like their
father's Winstons. "I think they're quite pernicious in a number of ways,"
said Dr. Jonathan Fielding, Los Angeles County's director of public health.

"They have not been [sufficiently] on the radar screens of those involved
in tobacco control efforts." An informal survey of teenagers at four San
Francisco high schools last year found that 58% had puffed a bidi and 31%
smoked them regularly. The cigarettes were particularly popular among
ethnic minorities, and easier for underage buyers to obtain than regular
smokes. Most bidi packages lacked surgeon general's warning labels,
according to the San Francisco study, conducted by teenagers associated
with the city's Department of Public Health. Stung by the recent media
attention, officials with Moorpark based Kretek International, one of the
country's largest bidi distributors, declined to discuss concerns about
teenage bidi smoking and attendant health risks. In a written statement,
marketing director Shawn Ulizio called bidis a growing but still small
"niche market."

"All bidis sold by Kretek International are legally sanctioned by the U.S.
government and include government mandated health warning labels as well as
all applicable federal, state and local tobacco taxes," Ulizio wrote.

As tobacco products, bidis are illegal for minors to buy; Arizona
legislators recently took the additional step of specifically banning bidi
sales to youth and increasing penalties for illegal sales. Concerned Los
Angeles public health officials expect to add a bidi question or two to
their upcoming tobacco survey of 3,000 homes; the state is doing likewise.
In Orange County, alarm about the bidi craze prompted one mother to warn
other parents about them in a widely distributed PTA newsletter.

Starting this fall, thousands of Ventura County sixth graders will be
warned about snuff, cigarettes and bidis in a tobacco education class. The
message: No matter how appealing the bidi packaging, the smokes are still
tobacco. Whatever the form, tobacco is dangerous. Long term studies in
India show that bidi smokers have twice the lung cancer risk of smokers of
filtered cigarettes. That is partly a result of the nonporous nature of the
tendu, or ebony, leaves that serve as bidi wrappers, said Dr. Samira Asma,
an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. To keep
the sticks lit, smokers must take deep drags more often.

Hand rolled by women and children, bidis have been smoked in India for more
than a century. Sold there for pennies a pack, bidis are known as the "poor
man's cigarette" in India, said Asma, a native of India.

Bidis have cluttered shelves in ethnic markets in the United States for two
decades or more, but have only gained in popularity in the 1990s. Recently,
they have been riding the wave of Indian chic, which ushered in mendhi body
art and sariprint fashions, she said. While exact numbers of U.S. bidi
smokers are not known, imports are trending upward, said Darryl Jayson,
vice president of the nonprofit Tobacco Merchants Assn., an industry trade
group in Princeton, N.J.

In 1998, he estimated, 76.6 million bidi cigarettes with an import value of
$642,000 were shipped to American distributors. In the first four months
this year, 28.3 million bidis arrived, valued at $308,000. It is difficult
to say precisely how many bidis enter the country, because they are lumped
into several different tariff codes. The bidis are a mere fraction of the
United State's $51million cigarette market, Jayson said.

"It is growing, but compared to the overall market, it's still less than a
droplet," he said. El Don Liquors in Huntington Beach now stocks five
flavors of bidi sand sells them for the same price as name brand
cigarettes: $4.25 for a pack of 20. Assistant manager Dave Pluma believes
kids buy them just because they're different. Cal State Fullerton student
Tania Isaacs, 23, was initially wooed by the dessert like taste of bidis.
She has since realized the health risks. "It's been a while since I smoked
one," she said, almost wistfully. "When I found out all the bad stuff
that's in them, I quit."