SURVEY LINKS SMOKING HABIT, EARLY EXPOSURE

Study: 36% of students who try it become daily users

ATLANTA (AP) -- More than a third of high school students who try
cigarettes develop a daily smoking habit before they graduate, the federal
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.

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 a day,
the CDC 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-smoking 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 33 percent 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.

``They started to smoke because they want an image, they want to make a
statement, they get seduced by the advertising,'' he said. ``But after a
few years, they realize it is costly, it is messy, it interferes with
performance and it no longer gives them the cachet it gave them when they
were 12 to 13 years old.''

Students in all 50 states 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: jwjohnson@netmagic.net (Joel W. Johnson)