
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, April 11, 1994                   TAG: 9404120027
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

INCONVENIENCE

SEVERAL SMOKERS at Valley View Mall on Friday were quoted as supporting the mall's planned no-smoking policy. "I think it's wonderful," said an employee at Hickory Farms, while taking a smoking break. Another smoker who endorsed the policy professed to be "in the process of quitting."

Most smokers are in the process of quitting, of course. Or cutting down. Or, at least, most people wish they could quit. Surveys show most smokers would prefer not to be so. Most people understand smoking is hazardous to health.

Most people, that is, except young people. Fragile self-esteem, along with heightened desire to fit in, to rebel and to seem mature, make adolescents natural suckers for the pitch of drug dealers, cigarette manufacturers included. Meanwhile, adolescents often tend to view themselves as immune, invulnerable and immortal.

The result, according to several studies, is that only a small percentage of youngsters believe smoking is a health threat. And even those who know the health risk tend to believe they can quit at any time.

One survey concluded that, while only 5 percent of student smokers say they will be smoking five years after graduation, 70 percent are still smoking eight years later.

One smoker who strongly criticized the shopping malls' announced policy Friday was a 17-year-old. "There's nothing to do except go to the mall," she lamented, "and now you can't even smoke there."

Good. This Roanoke teen-ager is one of 3 million American youths under 18 who consume an estimated 947 million packs of cigarettes, never mind that selling to minors is illegal in most states, including Virginia.

If she's unhappy now, wait till the federal government raises the cigarette tax by a dollar or more. On a teen-ager's budget, that should put a serious crimp in her habit. Many younger adolescents will choose not to begin smoking in the first place.

That's the hope, anyway.

by CNB