FOCUS ON TEENS TAILS

T0 win the War on Tobacco, antismoking strategists have long insisted, the
focus must be on teens.

Smokers, after all, start young. According to the surgeon general's 1994
report, the average age at which American smokers first try cigarettes is
14. The average age at which they become daily smokers is 17. "Nicotine
addiction is a pediatric disease that often begins at 12, 13, and 14," says
David Kessler, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration
and staunch enemy of the tobacco industry, "only to manifest itself at 16
and 17, when these children find they cannot quit."

To fight this "pediatric disease," the sale of cigarettes to minors has
been made illegal In every state. Tobacco ads have been banned from
television and radio, and eliminated from publications and shows aimed
primarily at young people. Joe Camel, harshly (and probably inaccurately)
condemned as seductive to children. has been dropped from R.J. Reynolds's
advertising.

The National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids has raised more than $32 million
since 1996. The proposed tobacco settlement has drawn intense coverage.
Among its requirements: that cigarette companies supply $500 million a year
to pay for anti-smoking education programs, that cigarette vending machines
be banned everywhere, and that all tobacco bill-boards and promotional
materials and product placement in movies and TV shows be forbidden.

Minors, meanwhile, have been bombarded with anti-smoking messages. The
warning labels on cigarette packs have been made more explicit and
alarming. In states as diverse as Mizona, California, and Massachusetts,
higher cigarette taxes have gone to pay for lavish anti-smoking campaigns.
Many school districts have altered their health curricula to include
graphic lessons on the dangers of tobacco.

In short, American kids have been exposed in recent years to the most
intense antismoking campaign in history. The result?

An explosion of teen-age smoking.

Between 1991 and 1997, smoking rates among high school students jumped from
27.5 percent to 36.4 percent --a jolting one-third increase. According to
figures just released by the federal Centers for Disease Control, 40
percent of white high school girls say they have smoked a cigarette at
least once in the past 30 days; 20 percent say they smoke frequently.
African-American kids are smoking cigarettes at a rate 80 percent greater
than they were seven years ago. Add in cigars and chewing tobacco, and more
than half 0# all white teenage boys are users: 51.5 percent report using
some form of tobacco during the past month.

Crunch the data any way you like, the massive anti-teen-smoking crusade has
been a disaster. Countless millions of dollars have been poured into
convincing youngsters not to smoke, yet a larger share of them are smoking
every day. It Is hard to imagine a more thoroughgoing failure. So will the
antitobacco warriors, humbled by such a defeat, call off their jihad?

Of course not. They will demand even more restrictions, impose even higher
taxes, curse tobacco companies more loudly. They will insist that the law
go even further to deprive smokers of the right to choose. And all, of
course, for "the kids."

The moment the CDC numbers were released, Health and Human Services
Secretary Donna Shalala was ready with a save-the-kids quote. "We're losing
ground in the battle to protect our children," she said. "Congress must act
promptly to enact comprehensive tobacco control legislation to protect our
children." Al Gore was ready, too: "This report gives us dramatic proof
that we must continue to fight to protect our young people from the
dangerous lure of tobacco."

But imposing ever-tougher sanctions isn't going to make kids lose interest
in smoking. The more the government preaches that cigarettes are nasty,
rude and reckless, the more some teenagers will want to smoke. What better
way to get restive adolescents to do something than to hector them
constantly not to do it? Smoking is so wicked that adults are demonising
even a cartoon camel? Lemme try one.

For more than a century, teens have been told that smoking is bad for them;
for more than a century, some teens have taken up smoking. Just as some
teens have taken up liquor, some have taken up reckless driving, aud some
have taken up drugs. All are Illegal. All are, for that very reason, more
appealing and "cool." Short of adopting dictatorial controls, there are
limits to what any government can do to stop teenagers from experimenting.

We have made it illegal for minors to acquire tobacco; we have made sure
they know that smoking is unhealthy; we have jacked up the price of
cigarettes with state and federal taxes. That much makes sense. Anything
more - the bans on to-tobacco-logo T-shirts, the Joe Camel insanity, the
persecution of restaurant owners - is hysteria. And as the new statistics
suggest, nothing makes tobacco more alluring to adolescents than hysterical
grown-ups admonishing them not to smoke.