Report: Teen smoking down, but one in 10 middle-schoolers smokes

Thursday, January 27th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

ATLANTA (AP) -- Smoking among high schoolers dropped in 1999 for the first time since the government began keeping track at the start of the decade. But nearly one in 10 children are already smoking cigarettes in middle school.

A nationwide survey of 7,529 high schoolers in September and October found that 28.4 percent reported using tobacco products in the preceding month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday. In 1997, the last time the CDC looked at high school smoking, 36.4 percent of students said they had smoked in the preceding month.

At the time, teen smoking was on the rise, from 34.8 per cent in 1995 and 27.5 percent in 1991, the first year the CDC started keeping track. The CDC said it expected teen smoking rates to drop -- just notby so much. The agency said differences between the 1999 survey and earlier studies may have exaggerated the decline. "We may have peaked in terms of smoking rates among high school students," said Michael Eriksen, director of the CDC's Office on Smoking and Health.

The drop in smoking rates had been expected because tobacco companies raised cigarette prices about 45 cents a pack last year to help pay for the $206 billion national settlement. As part of the settlement, billboard ads for cigarettes were banned and the tobacco industry was barred from running advertisements with cartoon characters such as Joe Camel that anti-smoking activists say are aimed at youngsters.

In many places, cigarette billboards have been replaced by signs with anti-smoking messages. For the first time ever, the CDC also surveyed middle school students about smoking, questioning about as many middle-schoolers as high school students. Nine percent of the students in grades six through eight said they had smoked cigarettes. Nearly 13 percent said they had used some tobacco product -- including chewing tobacco, pipes and cigars. "I don't think it was that surprising, because we see such high rates in high school that we know it begins in middle school. We just didn't know at what level," Eriksen said.

Ron Todd, director of tobacco control for the American Cancer Society, agreed that higher cigarette prices should result in fewer smokers of high school age. But he said the CDC's numbers surprised him "I wouldn't expect a decline that dramatic," Todd said. "We'll have to continually monitor it to get a better picture of what's really going on."

The questions used in the surveys and the one in 1997 were the same, said Wick Warren, a CDC statistician. But response rates varied. About 90 percent of schools responded to the 1999 tobacco survey. The earlier surveys, which also included questions about sex, got responses from about 75 percent of schools. The study also found that the wide gap in smoking rates between white and black high school students does not exist among middle-schoolers.

The proportion of blacks smoking in high school was nearly 16 per cent -- half the percentage of white smokers. But in middle school, both racial groups were about 9 percent. Though it is too soon to tell, this could signal the end of a 25-year trend in which blacks started smoking later than whites.

Two trendy types of imported cigarettes -- bidis and kreteks --are being smoked by about 5 per cent of high schoolers and 2 per centof middle-schoolers. That makes them almost as popular as chewing tobacco. Bidis are skinny, unfiltered Indian cigarettes that come in flavors such as vanilla. Kreteks are a kind of clove cigarette.