CIGARETTES HAVE A LOOK AND AROMA LIKE MARIJUANA

FADS:The sweet-flavored cigarettes have a look and aroma like
marijuana,which is part of their allure.

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 Fuby jeans, and Timberland all-purpose boots.

And like boys and girls across Boston, 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.

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 twr, a cancer-causing agent.

And beedies 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
markets.

"It's a phenomenon we are just now seeing," said Greg Connolly, who heads
Massachusetts'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 San Francisco,
Cleveland and Chicago.

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

And some brands come with a U.S. 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 teen-agers find the exotic 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 - though the price of beedies varies from store
to store. And a smoldering beedie has a funky odor similar to that of
marijuana and incense smoke.

Checked-by: derek rea