KISSING OFF CIGARETTES

American kids are getting smarter. Fewer are taking up cigarettes and
other dangerous drugs.

The news is particularly heartening among young teenagers. They're
smoking half as much as their peers a decade ago. Their use of illegal
drugs is a third lower.

True, the use of most drugs tends to rise and fall. And the annual
survey taken by the University of Michigan for the National Institute
on Drug Abuse found two worrisome trends: the abuse of prescription
OxyContin, as well as inhalants such as glue and aerosol products.
Parents and kids' friends should be alert to those dangers.

Yet the sharp decline in smoking is worth celebrating. Researchers
give credit to the crackdown on cigarette marketing to kids and the
banishing of Joe Camel, as well as to anti-smoking campaigns and
higher prices -- another powerful reason why North Carolina should
raise its laughably low cigarette tax.

Almost three-quarters of high-school seniors said they'd rather not go
out with a smoker. That's got to be the worst news cigarette pushers
have gotten since 1964, when the Surgeon General issued the first
anti-smoking report.

If puffing no longer looks cool to the opposite sex, what's the point
of taking up an addiction that might kill you?