CRACKING DOWN ON YOUNG SMOKERS

By Barry Meier, New York Times Service

NEW YORKAs Congress prepares to consider legislation intended to reduce
tobacco use by youths in the United States, cities, states and schools
increasingly are taking measures to crack down on what they see as a major
cause of the problem: the young people themselves.

Over the past year, Florida, Idaho Minnesota, North Carolina and Texas have
passed laws that could result in stiff penalties for minors who try to buy
or possess cigarettes or chewing tobacco. Those convicted of such offenses
could lose their driver's licenses, face fines of as much as $1,000 or even
be imprisoned for as long as six months.

Some cities, meanwhile, are using undercover police officers to catch
youths who smoke and some schools that test students for substances such as
marijuana are also screening them for nicotine.

The new measures follow repeated failures in recent years to halt the
growth in tobacco use among minors through educational programs and other
measures. But whiSe some opponents of smoking support a tougher approach
toward young people, others see the new state laws, many of which are
backed by the tobacco industry, as a draconian response to a custom that
was once considered a teenage rite of passage. "These sound like a fairly
stringent attack on the problem," said Kenneth Warner, a professor at the
University of Michigan School of Public Health and a specialist on youth
smoking.

Proponents of a proposed $368.5 billion settlement over the healthcare
costs of smoking reached in June between tobacco companies and state
attorneys general say the settlement contains several measures that would
be expected to reduce the nurnber of young people who smoke.

Those include banning tobacco ads vertising on billboards and in some
magazines, removing cigarette vending machines, ending tobacco companies'
sponsorships of sporting events and concerts and ending the sale of
products such as clothing that carry brand names of cigarettes or chewing
tobacco.

But many of those opposed to smoking also have said that smoking among
teenagers will decline only if the cost of cigarettes rises by far more
than the additional 70 cents a Dack called for under the proposed
settiement. Some such as Mr. Warner, have called for an increase of $2 a packu

Teenage smoking rates are lower than they were three decades ago. But the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that 35 percent of
high school students are cigarette smokers, and a University of Michigan
survey called Monitoring the Future, which follows teenage smoking trends,
has found steady increases in recent years in the number of minors who
regularly use tobacco.

Every U.S. state and the District of Columbia have laws that ban the sale
of tobacco products to minors, although publichealth specialists have said
that such laws are ineffective because they are poorly written, rarely
enforced or both. In the past, cities and states also have fined minors
caught with cigarettes though the penalties have been small.

But some of the new state laws, which also stiffen penalties on those who
sell tobacco products to youths, now hold young people as responsible as
adults for violating tobacco laws, said Sarah Perez a policy analyst with
the National Conference of State Legislatures.

"The laws we have seen this year flip things upside down and penalize the
minor as well as the retailer," Ms. Perez said.

Some antismoking activists argued that the tobacco industry, after years
of making cigarettes attractive to youths, was supporting the new laws to
blame young people for using their products. But others, while not
endorsing the statutes, say some blame for youth smoking must fall on all
involved.

"My personal point of view is that there has to be some responsibility on
the part of the kids," said Bill Novelli, president of the National Center
for TobaccoFree Kids, an advocacy group based in Washington.