SMOKING UP 28 PERCENT FOR COLLEGE STUDENTS

Cigarette smoking is on the rise among college students, jumping 28 percent
in four years and causing health advocates to warn that the nation may face
more tobacco-caused disease.

"The rise in this group is really an alarming sign," said Henry Wechsler of
Harvard University, whose study appears today in the Journal of the
American Medical Association.

Wechsler's findings aren't a surprise - smoking already had risen 32
percent among teen-agers in the 1990s. So once those teens hit college, the
rates among college students were sure to rise, too.

But the findings show that health officials must target college students to
try to get them to quit, said Dr. Donald Sharp of the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention.