Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 20, 1995 TAG: 9507200060
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
Occasional or regular cigarette smoking by eighth-graders has jumped to 19 percent, an increase of nearly one-third over the past three years, according to a government-funded survey of teen drug use.
Smoking is also on the rise among 10th- and 12th-graders, although the increases are slightly lower in those groups, the survey found.
The findings come at a time when the Clinton administration is considering tougher regulations on cigarettes to combat what it calls the ``pediatric disease'' of smoking.
Lloyd D. Johnston, who directed the survey for the National Institute on Drug Abuse, said the findings were a warning that the next generation of American adults could face rising rates of lung cancer, heart disease and other smoking-related diseases.
``Cigarette smoking is the largest preventable cause of early death,'' he said. ``To see that serious a behavior starting to grow among our children is very disturbing. There is no question that that will cause an enormous amount of unnecessary disease and death.'' Johnston is a social psychologist at the University of Michigan's Survey Research Center.
The survey provides solid confirmation of earlier studies, said Michael Eriksen, director of the surgeon general's Office on Smoking and Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
``There is absolutely no question that teen smoking rates are on the rise,'' Eriksen said. ``The only people who are denying this are spokespersons for the tobacco industry. They have the audacity to quote CDC data, suggesting that our data shows smoking declining.''
The industry and its allies in Congress have been distorting the meaning of CDC data to claim that there has been a 10 percent drop in teen smoking, Eriksen said.
Brennan Dawson, a spokeswoman for the Tobacco Institute, did not challenge the new findings, but she did argue that the trends in teen smoking are unclear. ``There are conflicts in some of these studies,'' she said.
Dawson said the new survey ``is certainly of concern and disappointing, but it points to a much broader social issue, because the increases in illegal drug use and the softening of risk and disapproval of drugs are so much higher than any changes in smoking.''
The latest findings are from Johnston's 20th annual government-funded survey of teen drug and tobacco use. The survey was initially limited to high school seniors, but eighth- and 10th-graders were added in 1991.
The number of eighth-graders who said they had smoked a cigarette in the previous 30 days rose from 14.3 percent in 1991 to 18.6 percent in 1994, an increase of 30 percent.
by CNB