SMOKING BECOMES HABIT FOR ONE-THIRD OF STUDENTS WHO TRY IT

Addiction: Seventy three percent of those teens said they had tried to quit.

Alanta - More than a third of high school students who try cigarettes
develop a daily smoking habit before they graduate, the government said today.

In a survey of more than 16,000 students nationwide, nearly 36 percent who
had ever smoked said their smoking escalated to at least a cigarette per
day, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

Nearly 73 percent with a daily habit said they had tried to quit. But only
13.5 percent successfully stopped, the CDC said.

"That's strictly a testimony to the power of nicotine," said Michael
Eriksen, director of the CDC's Office of Smoking and Health. "We were
really struck by how this little drama of tobacco addiction really is
completely played out before high school graduation."

The CDC report was released as Congress debates anti-smiling legislation
that would raise taxes on cigarettes and levy stiff fines against tobacco
companies if teen smoking rates fail to drop significantly.

The Tobacco Institute, the lobbying arm of the tobacco industry, had no
immediate response to the study.

Seventy percent of students surveyed said they had tried cigarettes at
least once. The percentage is probably higher among teens overall because
the survey did not include dropouts, Eriksen said.

Previous studies had estimated that from 33 to 50 percent of people who
experiment with cigarettes become regular smokers.

But now researchers can show that smokers develop a pattern of nicotine
addiction and a desire to quit in their teens, Eriksen said.

Students in all 50 state were surveyed in 1997. Students were considered
daily smokers if they had ever smoked at least once a day for a period of
30 days. The report counted former smokers as those who had quit for at
least 30 days before they were surveyed.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski