`BEEDIES' ARE TEENS' NEWEST ADDICTION

Jose Barrios is a marketing man's dream teen, sitting on the crumbling
cement stairwell across from Madison Park High School in a navy Tommy
Hilfiger jacket, baggy Fubu jeans, and Timberland all-purpose boots.

And like boys and girls across the city, 16-year-old Barrios has in his
pocket the latest fad to sweep through high schools and city blocks --
beedies.

Thin Indian cigarettes in sweet flavors like cherry and vanilla, beedies --
or bidis, depending on the brand -- come in pink packages that make them
look more like party favors than a pack of smokes. Text:

Jose Barrios is a marketing man's dream teen, sitting on the crumbling
cement stairwell across from Madison Park High School in a navy Tommy
Hilfiger jacket, baggy Fubu jeans, and Timberland all-purpose boots.

And like boys and girls across the city, 16-year-old Barrios has in his
pocket the latest fad to sweep through high schools and city blocks --
beedies.

Thin Indian cigarettes in sweet flavors like cherry and vanilla, beedies --
or bidis, depending on the brand -- come in pink packages that make them
look more like party favors than a pack of smokes.

"They're not really cigarettes like a Marlboro that has nicotine and tar and
stuff like that," Barrios explained.

But state health officials say Barrios, like plenty of teens in Boston and
other cities across the country, is wrong: The tiny brown unfiltered
cigarettes contain tobacco and have high levels of tar and nicotine.

And they are now piling up on the desks of urban school principals, seized
from youths who clamor for the newest must-have on counters of small
neighborhood markets in Dorchester, Mattapan, Roxbury, and Jamaica Plain.

"It's a phenomenon we are just now seeing," said Greg Connolly, who heads
the state's tobacco control program for the Department of Public Health.
"It's mostly in ethnic neighborhoods. It's become sort of urban chic."

First a fad with underage smokers in Los Angeles about five years ago, the
beedies craze has slowly moved across the country through cities like San
Francisco, Cleveland, and Chicago, and is currently ablaze in Boston.

In San Francisco earlier this year, a survey of 461 students at four city
high schools found that 58 percent of them had tried beedies at least once
or knew someone who had. Connolly said he is considering surveying a high
school in Boston or Cambridge for similar information.

Hand-rolled in India, beedies are unfiltered and tapered at one or both ends
and resemble a marijuana cigarette more than a machine- rolled Camel or
Winston.

But health officials in California say a beedie contains about 8 percent
nicotine, up to four times the levels found in standard American cigarettes.
Compared with a Marlboro, a beedie has more than twice the level of tar, a
cancer-causing agent.

And some brands sold in Boston come with a US surgeon general's warning:
Cigarettes contain carbon monoxide.

Connolly believes that distributors of beedies are targeting poor or
minority neighborhoods. And some storekeepers are either confused about
whether they are illegally selling tobacco to underage smokers or don't
care.

But there is consensus on why teenagers find the cigarettes, a blend of
Indian tobacco and other plant leaves, so appealing.

At an average of $2 for a pack of 20, they are about half the cost of a
standard pack of cigarettes; the price of beedies, however, varies from
store to store. And a smoldering beedie has a funky odor similar to
marijuana and incense smoke.

"They get a kick out of it," said Joseph Moscaritolo, Madison Park High
School assistant director. "They want you to think they are smoking
marijuana."

In Cambridge, Lynn Rufo, manager of the Central Square smoke shop, said her
store stocks beedies but refuses to sell them to the teenagers who
constantly ask for them.

"They are a big deal," Rufo said. "From what I can gather, the kids say they
can get thrown out of places because it smells like they are smoking
marijuana. And a lot of them say they are not as addictive as cigarettes."

School officials and campus police officers say that when they catch
students lighting up, the youths often argue that the beedies are not
dangerous to their health.

Like a handful of store owners interviewed in the city, Joshua Drigo, owner
of a small Roxbury convenience store, said he began carrying beedies a few
months ago, but will not sell them to children.

"I think a lot of business people think it's not tobacco, you know," Drigo
said.

And, like other store owners, he suspects that some adults are buying the
beedies for youths.

"They all want their beedies," Drigo said. "I tell them no, but they can get
someone else to {come in and} buy it for them."

Boston School Police Lieutenant Michael Hennessey said that busy,
neighborhood stores can get away with selling beedies to children because
the bright, cone-shaped packages are easier for their customers to conceal
than a box of mainstream cigarettes.

"It's just too bad that these stores would take advantage of the kids,"
Hennessey said. "We find them on kids as young as 13. The kids are smoking
those more than anything else. We confiscate them all day long."

Smokers would be hard-pressed to find beedies stocked in chain convenience
stores. At the Christy's Market on Centre Street in Jamaica Plain, the sales
clerk said she'd never heard of them, but the small grocers nearby say they
have plenty in stock.

"I can buy them," boasted one 15-year-old girl puffing on a beedie near
Fields Corner last week. "But they always tell me that I have to come in
when no one else is around."

"They have vanilla, pineapple, cherry, grape, licorice, and strawberry,"
said Dino Lopes, a 15-year-old Madison Park student who does not smoke.

"I never tried it -- OK, maybe a couple of times, but I hated it," Lopes
said. "It gets you very lightheaded.

"And, anyway, I don't consider a beedie as a cigarette."

Checked-by: Don Beck