HIGH SCHOOLERS PREFER CHEWING TO SMOKING

Pipe Usage Also Rises, Researchers Discover

There has been a shift from cigarette smoking toward chewing and pipe
tobacco among high school students in the past year, according to a
survey released Monday by the Indiana Prevention Resource Center.

Reported use of cigarettes among high school students remained
unchanged from a drop seen in 2005, while use of chewing tobacco and
pipe smoking increased in grades 10 through 12 statewide. Ruth
Gassman, executive director of the Indiana Prevention Resource
Center, said she didn't know what to attribute the change to but said
a lot of prevention effort has been focused solely on cigarette smoking.

The Indiana Prevention Resource Center, a research group out of
Indiana University, sent surveys across the state to 383 public and
private schools that volunteered to administer the annual survey to
131,017 students. Fifteen schools in northeast Indiana participated,
and 6,979 students took the survey, Gassman said.

The schools chose which students to survey, Gassman said. The purpose
of the survey was to measure alcohol, tobacco and other drug use on a
statewide and local basis for planning and evaluation of prevention
programs. The survey did not include individual county statistics,
and Gassman would not release the names of the schools that participated.

The survey has been conducted since 1991 and is administered through
a contract with the Division of Mental Health and Addiction of the
Indiana Family and Social Services Administration.

The percentage of northeast Indiana ninth-through 11th-graders who
have ever smoked cigarettes, chewed tobacco or smoked pipe tobacco
was lower than the state average. The percentage of 12th-graders who
used those same products was slightly higher than the state average,
with about 11 percent of northeast Indiana students smoking pipe
tobacco compared with about 11 percent statewide; about 23 percent
chewing tobacco compared with 20 percent statewide; and 50 percent
smoking cigarettes, compared with 51 percent statewide.

The northeast Indiana region includes Adams, Allen, DeKalb,
Huntington, LaGrange, Noble, Steuben, Wells and Whitley counties.