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Teen Smoking News on the Web Archive

Teen Smoking News on the Web

Note: These articles wink in and out of existence with the frequency of sub-atomic particles. Many links will be dead. In that case, these pages can be approached as bibliographies, both noting the event, and showing where you might look for further information.

• 4/97 The Perils, Promises And Pitfalls Of Criminalizing Youth Possession Of Tobacco Graham E. Kelder, Managing Attorney, Winter, 1997 Tobacco Control Update, Tobacco Control Resource Center,
  
  Existing empirical data supports the effectiveness of youth access restrictions like vending machine bans, bans on self-service displays and bans on the sale of single or loose cigarettes. The limited research that has been done to date on the effects of criminalization of youth possession of tobacco on teen smoking rates indicates that youth anti-possession measures are not the panacea that many advocates of them wish they were
  
  
• 04/03/98 Tobacco Use Among High School Students CDC
  
• 04/03/98 Alarming Rise In Teen Smoking Defies National Effort, CDC Says Atlanta Journal & Constitution
• 04/03/98 Smoking Among Teens Continues To Rise Philadelphia Inquirer
• 04/03/98 Smoking by Black Youths Is Up Sharply, Study Finds The New York Times
  
  Thursday, that optimism was all but extinguished by a new study that found that cigarette use among black high school students has jumped 80 percent since 1991.
• 04/03/98 Teen Smoking Spirals Chicago Sun-Times
• 04/03/98 Teen Tobacco Use Jumps 30% Since '91, Report Shows Dallas Morning News
• 04/03/98 Teens Are Lighting Up In Increasing Numbers Washington Post
  
• 04/03/98 Study Finds Sharp Rise in Teenage Tobacco Use LA Times. Here's the LA Times item at Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune: Tobacco Use By Teenagers -- Especially Blacks -- Increases
• 04/03/98 Smoking Among Teen-agers Rising, CDC Study Says Washington Post/Winston-Salem Journal
• 04/03/98 Teen-age Tobacco Use On The Rise LA Times/Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
• 04/02/98 More Smokers In Us High Schools, Especially Blacks Reuters
  
  Smoking by U.S. high school students rose 36 percent between 1991 and 1997, fueled by an 80 percent increase in smoking rates among black teenagers, federal health officials said on Thursday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the percentage of black male students who smoked has doubled since 1991. Smoking by black female students rose 54 percent during the same period.
• 04/02/98 More Teens Smoking Reuters
  
  "We're losing ground in the battle to protect our children," Health and Human Services Secretary Donna E. Shalala said in a press statement from her office. "There is no excuse for delay. Congress must act promptly to enact comprehensive tobacco control legislation to protect our children."
• 04/02/98 Teen Smoking Rises Sharply UPI
  
  The study found that the overall prevalence of tobacco use was 42.7 percent among high school students. About half of male students and a third of female students used cigarettes, cigars or smokeless tobacco in the past month, the report estimates. Whites had the highest rate of tobacco use, at 46.8 percent, followed by Hispanics (36.8 percent) and African Americans (29.4 percent). CDC's Michael P. Eriksen says, "It's obvious that we are losing the war." He says that anti-tobacco rhetoric is not working, especially when public policies have not changed in any substantial way. Eriksen says, "There's a lot of posturing and proclamations about how bad smoking is, but in reality, it is business as usual for the tobacco companies."
• 04/02/98 Study: 43 Pct. of Teens Use Tobacco AP
  
  Forty-three percent of the nation's high school students either smoke cigarettes or cigars or chew tobacco, and the number of teen-age smokers is steadily rising, the government says in a report likely to boost efforts to reduce teen smoking. Among the most disturbing findings is that smoking by black students -once hailed as a success story for their continually low cigarette use -has almost doubled.
• 04/03/98 Download the MMWR PDF file from the CDC
  
  
• 04/03/98 PENNSYLVANIA: Smoking 'Looks Cool,' Unconcerned Teens Insist Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
  
  Health risks and the disapproval of parents appeared to have little effect on the young smokers
  
  
• 04/02/98 MONTANA: Tobacco Retail 101 NBC Montana/MSNBC
  
  Missoula retailers got a lesson in tobacco laws, Thursday. They received a refresher course on minimum-age sales laws for tobacco products, and they were shown how to recognize fake identifications. The retailers also learned some appropriate responses for frequently encountered situations, as when a customer is asked for ID but gives the retailer a difficult time about it. The goal of the training session is to keep minors from buying tobacco products. Bill Stevens "No one, including the retailers, wants to encourage kids to smoke,"
  
  
• 04/04/98 WISCONSIN: Study: Teens Can Buy Smokes 20 Percent Of The Time AP
  
  Minors trying to buy cigarettes illegally in Wisconsin service stations, convenience stores and other businesses were successful more than 20 percent of the time during a study, a state agency says. Vending machines proved to be an easier source of supply than the checkout counter, the state Department of Health and Family Services said. . . The survey was conducted last summer by the department, using children 15 and 16 years old to pose as customers older than 18.
• 04/04/98 Stores Who Sold Smokes To Teens At A Glance AP
  
  Types of businesses where the Wisconsin health department says minors attempted to buy tobacco illegally during a survey:
  
  
• 04/04/98 ARIZONA: State's Teen Smoke Rate Low; But They're Puffing More Today Than In '91 The Arizona Republic
  
  
• 04/04/98 CALIFORNIA: The Local Angle: Youth Smoking At 12% In State Sacramento Bee
  
  According to the most recent data available from the California Department of Health Services, nearly 12 percent of state youth reported smoking within a month of a survey taken in 1996. That survey did not include questions about smokeless tobacco or cigars, although a separate poll did find that 4 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds smoked cigars within the previous month and 1 percent of that age group chewed tobacco. There is no way to determine the overlap in the surveys, said department spokesman Ken August.
  
  
• 04/07/98 Teen Smoking Campaign Flops By Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe
  
  We have made it illegal for minors to acquire tobacco; we have made sure they know that smoking is unhealthy; we have jacked up the price of cigarettes with state and federal taxes. That much makes sense. Anything more - the bans on tobacco-logo T-shirts, the Joe Camel insanity, the persecution of restaurant owners - is hysteria. And as the new statistics suggest, nothing makes tobacco more alluring to adolescents than hysterical grown-ups admonishing them not to smoke.
  
  
• 04/07/98 EDITORIAL: Preventing Kids From Lighting Up Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
  
  Reversing this dangerous trend of teen smoking will take nothing short of a full-scale, wide-ranging assault that must involve everyone. Congress and President Clinton should adopt tough legislation to sharply curtail tobacco advertising aimed at young people, increase the price of cigarettes -- beyond the $1.10-per-pack boost under a bill now before the Senate -- and impose severe financial penalties on the tobacco industry if teen smoking doesn't decrease sufficiently. . . Finally, parents must shoulder some responsibility, by not smoking themselves and by promoting a healthy lifestyle, one in which children feel confident enough that they don't need to light up to get noticed or be accepted.
  
  
• 04/03/98 GEORGIA: Local Teens Going Up In Smoke Savannah Morning News
  
  Researchers are still crunching the numbers on a survey of youth risk behaviors conducted on 379 Chatham County ninth graders last year, but there's little reason to believe it will differ much from the rest of the nation, said Sandy Streater, the head of health sciences department at Armstrong Atlantic State University and a member of Partners for Community Health, the organization that carried out the survey. "General data says over 60 percent of students have tried smoking by the time they're 14," he said. "Preliminary results say Chatham County mirrors the national figures.".
  
  
• 04/06/98 CONNECTICUT: Agencies Unaware Of Their Role In Enforcing Tobacco Id Law The Chronicle, Willimantic, Conn
  
  A year after the government launched a much-publicized drive to cut down on underage smoking, the effort is weighted down in a bureaucratic morass. . . So what happened? In an attempt to check the status of the enforcement effort, a Chronicle reporter was led on a wild goose chase, making the following calls to state and local agencies:.
  
  
• 04/06/98 Science Starting to Tackle Teen Smoking LA Times
  
  Teens have their own issues, their own persuasion trigger points, their own pressures. What works for adult smokers--and researchers are still trying to figure out that problem too--may backfire for adolescents. In California, a phone counseling program that has been in place since 1992 ([800] 7-NO BUTTS) began providing teen counseling in 1996. . . "Kids don't stay in the programs. The best likelihood of success is to tie in the cessation program with an activity the kid likes," Benowitz says. That might be athletics, he says, or a church youth group or other activity, making participation in one dependent on the other. What's also worth a try, in his view, is nicotine patches for teens 15 or older.
  
  
• 04/06/98 Experts Baffled By Rise In Teen Smoking Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
  
  The likely ingredients include: peer pressure; low self-esteem; wanting to be cool; keeping weight down; Joe Camel and the Marlboro man and other advertising and promotions; smoking by actors on television and in movies; parental smoking; defiance of adults and authority; and the teenager's view that the health consequences of smoking are a long way off. But, one consequence of smoking is not off in the distant, smoky future -- addiction. . . The girls said they smoke four to 10 cigarettes a day. Do they want to quit? "Yes." "Yes." "Yes," was the chorus of answers.
  
  
• 04/06/98 MINNESOTA: Allina Health System's Survey Shows 1 in 5 Kids Have Tried Smoking PR Newswire
  
  Allina Health System announced today that almost 20 percent of the elementary school students surveyed for Project ACT have tried smoking. Researchers surveyed 1,347 students in grades four through eight in the fall of 1997. Almost one in five students (18.7%) said they had taken a puff of a cigarette. The students' average age was ten years. More than one in three (33.1%) said it was easy to get cigarettes from vending machines, and one in seven (15.1%) kids said they owned a T-shirt with a cigarette logo or picture. Survey responses by students' parents are currently being analyzed. .
  
  
• 04/09/98 Higher Cigarette Prices Would Have An "Insignificant" Impact On Teen-Age Smokers, A Cornell Study Finds Science Daily
  
  Boosting taxes on cigarettes will have a far less dramatic effect on rates of teen-age smoking than politicians are hoping, a new Cornell University study finds. In fact, say the researchers, higher taxes will have "a statistically insignificant impact" on whether young people decide to start smoking. . . The study was carried out by Don Kenkel and Alan Mathios, both economists and associate professors in policy analysis and management in Cornell's College of Human Ecology, and Phil Decicca, a graduate student in their department.
• 04/07/98 Cost Won't Stop Teen Smokers: Study UPI Twelfth New York News Report
  
  A new study finds boosting the price of cigarettes has almost no impact on whether young people decide to smoke. The Cornell study finds a $1.50-a-pack increase would reduce the number who take up smoking by only 2 percent. Some researchers have estimated the tax increase would cut the number by half. The researchers say higher taxes do reduce total tobacco sales and encourage adults to cut down or quit.
  
  
• 04/09/98 MICHIGAN: Kids Rate Antismoking Messages Detroit Free Press
  
  The fifth- and sixth-graders at Taylor's Racho Elementary School served as guinea pigs Wednesday -- and they loved it. Health and Human Services Secretary DONNA SHALALA visited the school to talk to students about the dangers of smoking and to get feedback from them about what kind of message kids will buy. She also gave them a sneak peek at an antismoking ad featuring the singing group Boyz II Men, which has yet to air.
  
  
• 04/09/98 VIRGINIA: Illegal Alcohol, Tobacco Sales Uncovered Metro In Brief, Washington Post
  
  The illegal sales numbers were a little better for tobacco. About 29 percent of stores checked made illegal tobacco sales to minors. But as with alcohol sales, nearly half of the tobacco sales were made after the buyers presented IDs.
  
  
• 04/09/98 MASSACHUSETTS: Steep Drop Found In Mass. Adult Smoking; Tax Is Cited Boston Globe
  
  The survey, carried out by the consulting firm Abt Associates and scheduled for release next week, found that consumption of cigarettes had dropped 31 percent since 1993, when the current $37 million dollar tobacco control program, funded by the cigarette tax, began. . . The percentage of adult smokers over 18 years old has dropped to 20.6 percent in 1997 from 22.6 percent in 1993 . . . Massachusetts's youth cigarette smoking rate still remains above the national average of 29 percent, but unlike what is happening across the country, the number of young smokers has remained level at about 31 percent.
  
  
• 04/10/98 INTERVIEW: DR. JOYCELYN ELDERS: Salon Mothers who Think; Not Waiting to InhaleSalon
  
  Last year a group of African-American religious leaders blamed Big Tobacco for the increase in cigarette smoking among black youth. They pointed to advertisements such as the hip-hop Joe Camel displayed in their neighborhoods and complained of what they saw as an industrywide plot to seduce black youth into the deadly world of cigarettes. Their concern, it turns out, was on the money: . . Salon spoke with Dr. Joycelyn Elders . . about the current state of health education, the role advertising plays in luring smokers and why she still supports the president.
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• 04/10/98 Hostage Drama Ends with Cigarettes, Pizza Reuters
• 04/10/98 ILLINOIS: School Standoff Ends Peacefully AP/Chicago Tribune
  
  A 14-year-old student at a school for troubled youths pulled a gun on the principal Thursday, then holed up for five hours before surrendering after trading his guns for cigarettes, pizza and pop.
  
  
• 04/10/98 TEXAS: Fires Of Enforcement Burn Dimly; Law Took Effect Jan. 1, But Youths Puff On Boldly Houston Chronicle
  
  A new state law to squelch underage smoking took effect Jan. 1, but the Houston Police Department has yet to cite a single youngster. The law imposes 12 hours of tobacco education, a $250 fine, or suspension of a driver's license for any under-18 youth caught smoking in public. It also punishes businesses that sell to minors. Yet despite political puffery surrounding Senate Bill 55 when it was enacted, no one seems in a hurry to enforce it.
  
  
• 04/10/98 WASHINGTON: Tormented Student Pardoned in Wash. AP
  
  Brian Cade Sperry said he feared for his life in April 1995, when he was surrounded by more than 200 students, some chanting " kill him, hurt him." . . . Debora Sperry said her son endured harassment from classmates since he arrived in 1992 from Helena, Mont., because he would not drink, smoke or have sex.
  
  
• 04/10/98 Teen Tobacco Use: Bad News ABC News.com
  
  "Movies are a big problem. There's been a radical increase in cigar and cigarette use in the movies. And the people who are doing the smoking are never the losers." -- Prof. Stanton Glantz, UCSF. Adolescent smoking rates have been on a gradual upswing for the past six years, a fact that's likely to influence tobacco control legislation now before Congress.
  
  
• 04/11/98 UTAH: Anti-Tobacco Effort Won't Go Up in Smoke Salt Lake Tribune
  
  An anti-tobacco campaign targeting Utah youths will go forward despite a budgeting mistake by the Legislature. That's the consensus of lawmakers, the Health Department and budget makers who noticed too late that proper provisions were not made to cut checks for the ad campaign.
  
  
• 04/11/98 UTAH: 7 Cedar City Clerks Cited For Selling Tobacco To Youth Salt Lake Tribune
  
  Seven store clerks have been cited for selling tobacco to an underage buyer during a police sting operation this week. Clerks at JR's Truck Stop, Gary's Texaco, KB Express, Marty's Mart, Holiday Texaco, Surfast and Wal-Mart sold cigarettes to one of four underage buyers, according to police.
  
  
• 04/09/98 NEW YORK: Kick Butt Sales To Kids - Vacco (New York) Daily News
  
  f you sell smokes to kids, you're out of luck for LOTTO. That's the centerpiece of tough new laws state Attorney General DENNIS VACCO is proposing to keep cigarettes away from New York kids. Under the plan, stores caught selling cigarettes or liquor to kids could lose their Lotto licenses. The threat of losing Lotto will insure that a storeowner "will be a lot more aware of who his clerk sells to at 2 in the morning," Vacco said yesterday at a news conference.
  
  
• 04/13/98 Smoking Drops Slightly in CALIFORNIA BW HealthWIre
  
  Adult smoking measured 18.2 percent in 1997, as compared with 18.6 percent in 1996. In contrast, the national rate of adult smoking prevalence has averaged 25 percent over the past five years. Youth smoking also declined slightly, measuring 10.9 percent in 1997, as compared with 11.2 percent in 1996.
  
  
• 04/14/98 Fla. Anti-smoke Campaign Eyes Tobacco "Supporters" Reuters
  
  "The purpose of the list is to put the companies on alert that teens are holding them partly responsible for teen tobacco use," program spokeswoman Carlea Bauman said Tuesday. . . Leon County student Tori Binitie, 17, said the teen-agers working on the anti-tobacco pilot project were putting the companies on notice that they must take the issue of teen smoking seriously. "We can boycott, we can protest, we can affect them in their pockets."
• 04/14/98 Fla. Anti-Tobacco Ads Aims at Teens AP
• 04/14/98 Truth Becomes a Logo in Florida's Anti-Smoking Ads The New York Times
  
  In ambitious campaign to discourage smoking among teen-agers -- created with the assistance of the intended audience -- is joining "The X-Files" in asserting that the truth is out there. The broadcast, print, outdoor and interactive campaign, which begins this week, takes the unusual tack of trying to change behavior by transforming a concept -- truth -- into a brand. The goal of the campaign, sponsored by the Florida Department of Health with an initial budget of $25 million, is to counter what the advertisements charge are the inaccurate and misleading pitches used by the tobacco industry to sell its products to underage smokers. . . Florida's statement also listed advertising and public relations agencies with tobacco clients. However, the list was flawed. One agency that creates tobacco ads, Young & Rubicam Advertising in New York, was omitted from the list. And one included on the list, Trone Advertising in Greensboro, N.C., has not handled tobacco accounts since 1996. "We're completely out of that business," said James H. Feeney, president and chief executive of Trone. "We're a totally smoke-free office and a tobacco-free agency."
• 04/14/98 FLORIDA: Florida Names Firms It Describes As Supporters of Tobacco Industry The Wall Street Journal (pay registration)
  
  Monday, the state released a list of more than 70 ad agencies, public-relations firms, magazine publishers and retailers that it describes as "Tobacco Industry Supporters." The unusual list even includes bait shops and gift stores.
• 04/13/98 Fla. Anti-Tobacco Ads Aims at Teens AP
  
  "It's teens talking to teens -- we're not telling them what to do. We're just letting them know what the tobacco companies are doing to them," said 17-year-old TORI BINITIE, a junior at Lincoln High School in Tallahassee who appears in the campaign.
• 04/13/98 Youth Demand 'Truth' From Tobacco Supporters; FLORIDA Launches Ad Campaign PR Newswire
  
  Using funds from its settlement with the tobacco industry, today the State of Florida is launching a $25 million annual anti-tobacco advertising campaign. The "Truth" campaign was developed by Florida's teens and uses one of the most effective strategies known to affect teen behavior: rebellion. In this ad campaign, teens are demanding more honesty from tobacco supporters, including distributors, retailers, advertising agencies, the media that accept tobacco advertising, and movies that glamorize smoking. The tag- line for the campaign is "Their brand is lies. Our brand is truth."
  
  
• 04/16/98 MISSOURI: STEP UP Shows Merchants Don't Care Who Buys Cigarettes Kansas City Star
  
  The findings, released April 2 as part of "Kick Butts Day 1998," showed 21 of the 76 stores would have sold cigarettes to underage teens. And half of the 21 would have finished the sale even after checking the students' identification and seeing they were younger than 18.
  
  
• 04/15/98 Schools Try to Curb Teen Smoking AP
  
  The war on teen smoking is heading to the toilet. The oldest bastion of student smoking, boys' and girls' restrooms, is increasingly being targeted by school officials across the country.
  
  
• 04/15/98 American Cancer Society's PENNSYLVANIA Tobacco Prevention Network To Educate and Empower Youth in Youth Conference PR Newswire
  
  The American Cancer Society's Pennsylvania Tobacco Prevention Network (PTPN), funded by the Tobacco Control Program of the Pennsylvania Department of Health, will educate and empower Pennsylvania's youth, ages 14-18, about tobacco use prevention activities in a youth conference, "Tobacco-Free Youth Working Together Making a Difference!" from 12:30 p.m., April 16, to 2:00 p.m., April 17, at the Grantville Holiday Inn near Hershey.
  
  
• 04/21/98 PENNSYLVANIA: PA Coalition Opposes Criminalizing Youth Possession of Tobacco PR Newswire
  
  A broad-based coalition of Pennsylvania tobacco prevention groups opposes HB 1472 which would criminalize possession and use of tobacco by minors. HB 1472, introduced by state REP. DAN SURRA (D-Elk), is scheduled for consideration by the full PA House of Representatives tomorrow. "Our coalition has grave concerns that this bill may actually increase youth tobacco use by inappropriately shifting responsibility away from businesses and adults who are marketing and selling tobacco products to minors, a tactic long advocated by Big Tobacco," said JEFFREY BARG, president of the COALITION FOR A TOBACCO FREE PENNSYLVANIA.
  
  
• 04/21/98 OHIO: Licensing Cigarette Sellers Requested Cincinnati Enquirer
  
  Tapping into growing anti-tobacco sentiment, two of Ohio's top statewide officials called Monday for increased penalties for retailers caught selling cigarettes to minors. The proposal by Gov. George Voinovich and Attorney General Betty Montgomery is the latest attempt to curb teen smoking, which continues to rise nationwide despite more aggressive prevention efforts. Under their initiative, retailers would be required to buy new licenses to sell tobacco products.
• 04/21/98 Tobacco-To-21 Responds to Governor, Attorney General Proposal To License Tobacco Retailers
  
  Tobacco-To-21 is now urging the governor and attorney general to take the next logical step and endorse the minimum age requirement for purchasing tobacco to 21, the minimum age standard for purchasing alcohol.
• 04/21/98 Retailers Object To Proposed Stricter Penalty On Tobacco Sales AP/Akron Beacon Journal
  
  John C. Mahaney Jr., president of the Ohio Council of Retail Merchants, said the state should make it illegal for minors to buy tobacco before further penalizing the sellers.
  
  
• 04/21/98 Hike In Cigarette Price Won't Deter Teens Reuters
  
  Although some studies seem to support the idea that higher taxes on cigarettes have a significant impact on rates of teen smoking, economists Don Kenkel and Alan Mathios of Cornell's College of Human Ecology, Ithaca, New York, say closer scrutiny of the data show little reduction in smoking behavior. In fact, Kenkel and Mathios along with graduate student Phil Decicca say that a 20-cent per pack tax increase would reduce the number of new teenage smokers in grades 8 through 12 by less than one-half of a percentage point. Further, they estimate a $1.50 per pack boost in price -- which the President says would cut teen smoking in half -- would reduce the number of new smokers by just 2%. These study findings were first presented earlier this year at the American Economics Association annual meeting in Chicago, Illinois.
  
  
• 04/21/98 MAINE: Anti-smoke Ads To Avoid Pitfalls Portland Press Herald
  
  "If you tell kids don't do it, don't do it, it's the first thing they want to do when they hit that rebellious stage," says DR. DORA ANNE MILLS, the state's director of public health. . . Mills said part of the campaign will include airing television commercials showing how the tobacco industry manipulates the public into wanting to smoke. . . "It kind of gives them something to rebel against," Mills said. Maine's $4.5 million new campaign - called a PARTNERSHIP FOR TOBACCO-FREE MAINE - primarily will be funded through an increase in the state tax on cigarettes.
  
  
• 04/21/98 ILLINOIS: BUFFALO GROVE: Ordinance Adds Options For Punishing Underage Smokers Chicago Tribune
  
  Police officers will have more flexibility in punishing young people caught smoking now that the Village Board has passed an ordinance increasing the sanctions they can impose. Under terms of the ordinance passed Monday night, the department's youth officer will have a choice of issuing a ticket with a $50 fine, sentencing a youth to community service or sending him to a stop-smoking program.
  
  
• 04/22/98 Youths Tie Tobacco Use to Marijuana The New York Times
  
  Teen-agers themselves, and some experts who have studied adolescent smoking, add another, less predictable explanation to the mix of factors: the decision to take up smoking because of a belief that cigarettes prolong the heady rush of marijuana. "It makes the high go higher," said Marquette, a 16-year-old student
  
  
• 04/23/98 Bay Area Leads In Teen Smoking St. Petersburg Times
  
  A new statewide survey by the Florida Department of Health shows that middle and high school students in Pinellas, Pasco, Hillsborough and Manatee counties are more likely to smoke than teens in any other part of Florida. Experts have no idea why.
• 04/23/98 Florida Teens Light Up Despite Campaign Reuters
• 04/23/98 FLORIDA: State's Minors Respond To The Lure Of Tobacco Miami Herald
  
  More than one-third of Florida's high schoolers and almost one-quarter of middle schoolers say they have consumed some form of tobacco -- cigarettes, cigars or chew -- within the past 30 days. State health authorities say this level of tobacco use among minors -- revealed Wednesday in the results of a massive state survey -- portrays a daunting challenge for Florida's emerging campaign against smoking.
• 04/23/98 S. Florida Teens Smoke Less Than State Average, Study Says Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
  
  More than a third of the state's high school students and nearly a quarter of its middle school students have used tobacco within the past 30 days, Gov. Lawton Chiles said on Wednesday. But South Florida -- bolstered by high numbers of blacks and Hispanics, who smoke far less than white teens -- fell below the state average.
  
  
• 04/23/98 How to Sell Cigarettes to Kids The Wall Street Journal (pay registration)
  
  People who spend billions on it know to their sorrow that advertising is a weak force, ignored by most consumers most of the time. . . Rather, advertising seems to work only on those who are already in the market for a message. . . On the slight chance that anyone in Washington is really interested, "just say no" was probably the most effective message ever aimed at kids.
  
  
• 04/19/98 ILLINOIS: RIVERWALK Parking Ban Lifted The Naperville Sun
  
  But youths under age 18 caught smoking or possessing tobacco products will be ticketed by police patrolling the popular downtown attraction.
  
  
• 04/23/98 New Anti-Smoking Ads Target Movie Industry LA Times
  
  Two government-funded advertising campaigns are putting the motion picture industry on the defensive. As part of an effort funded by its settlement with Big Tobacco, Florida is running print ads developed with input from teens that attack film images of smoking. "Attention movie industry," said an ad that ran recently in The Times and Hollywood trades. "We're your best customers. So why are you trying to kill us?"
  
  
• 04/24/98 The Perils, Promises And Pitfalls Of Criminalizing Youth Possession Of Tobacco Graham E. Kelder, Managing Attorney, Winter, 1997 Tobacco Control Update, Tobacco Control Resource Center,
  
  Existing empirical data supports the effectiveness of youth access restrictions like vending machine bans, bans on self-service displays and bans on the sale of single or loose cigarettes. The limited research that has been done to date on the effects of criminalization of youth possession of tobacco on teen smoking rates indicates that youth anti-possession measures are not the panacea that many advocates of them wish they were
  
  
• 04/26/98 PENNSYLVANIA: Burlco Freeholder Fumes Over Use Of Teen Scouts Metro, Philadelphia Inquirer
  
  BURLINGTON COUNTY freeholders last week approved continuing an anti-tobacco program that will bring the county more than $16,000 of state money raised through licenses for tobacco sellers. But freeholder William S. Haines Jr., voted against it, objecting to the part of the program that uses teenage Explorer Scouts to attempt to buy cigarettes to make sure stores are sending them away.
  
  
• 04/26/98 WASHINGTON: Investigating Those Who Sell Cigarettes To Minors KHQ-6, Spokane, WA/MSNBC
  
  State agents told KHQ News they are not surprised their teen buyer went away with cigarettes. Washington has one of the highest compliance rates in the country with more than 80% of stores refusing to sell to kids. "It's encouraging to see," admits Charlotte Rima of the Spokane County Health District. Still, it doesn't mean teens cannot get cigarettes. Some underage smokers told KHQ News that they get people to buy their packages for them. The teens will sit in front of a store, asking those going inside to buy them cigarettes. Eventually, the teens say, they succeed. That's why there's a new law that will soon go on the books in Washington. Starting June 12th it will be illegal for teens to possess tobacco, whether they purchased it or not.
  
  
• 04/27/98 NEW YORK CITY: 100 Youths Checking Sale Of Cigarettes To Teen-agers The New York Times
  
  Over the next six months, 100 teen-agers, recruited through a city-run employment program, will be paid $6.25 an hour to roam the city, randomly checking the 15,500 stores that sell cigarettes and other tobacco products as part of a program called Summer Smoke Out.
• 04/27/98 Teens Smoke Out Tobacco Violations Reuters
  
  
• 04/27/98 TEXAS: County Smoking Out Juvenile-law Fallacies Austin American-Statesman
  
  Williamson County law enforcement officials will explain laws related to underage smoking and drinking from 7 to 9 p.m. today at St. Williams Parish Activity Center, 1150 McNeil Road.
  
  
• 04/30/98 OHIO: 'WE CARD' Tobacco Sales Training Programs Planned for 1998 PR Newswire
  
  
• 04/30/98 OHIO: New Statewide Study of OHIO 11th Graders Finds D.A.R.E. Curbs Drug, Alcohol Use / Students with Multiple Semesters of D.A.R.E. 50% Less Likely to Be High Risk Drug Users / Strengthens Peer Resistance Skills, Police Officer Respect
  
  Additionally, The OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY study found that D.A.R.E. students had superior skills in judging TV programming and commercials depicting drugs and alcohol. "This is very encouraging because too often the mass media -- movies, TV, music -- romanticizes getting high or getting loaded," Levant said. "D.A.R.E. emphasizes that these messages are false, that smoking, drinking and drugging harms young bodies. Our message is getting through."
  
  
• 04/30/98 OPINION: Ineffective Against Smoking Rates Simon Chapman, Washington Post
  
  From here in Australia, aspects of the U.S. debate on tobacco control seem decidedly parochial. President Clinton's endorsement of the $1.10-per-pack price rise on cigarettes over five years and a forecast 65 percent fall in teenage smoking over 10 years have all the hallmarks of magic-bullet thinking ["Tobacco Bill Skirts Liability," front page, March 30]. . . While the "scream test" from the tobacco industry confirms that significant tax increases bite into sales, a $1.10 tax hike would take the United States only to the middle range of world cigarette prices. The $1.10-per-pack increase is most unlikely to be the knockout punch that some seemingly naive (or calculating) proponents predict it will be.
  
  
• 04/30/98 Teens Have Conservative Attitudes: Poll UPI
  
  A New York Times/CBS News poll finds that teens give tattoos, beepers, school condom distribution programs and God a thumbs-up and have conservative views about sex. . . Strong majorities say they never drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes or marijuana, and 19 in 20 say they believe in God.
  
  
• 05/04/98 Sexual Orientation Associated With Increased Health Risk In Teenagers, Study Shows PR Newswire
  
  The responses came in a voluntary, anonymous Youth Risk Behavior Survey prepared by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with an added question on sexual orientation, according to Robert H. DuRant, Ph.D., professor of pediatrics at the Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, and senior author of the Pediatrics paper. . . The survey was conducted in Massachusetts high schools in 1995 . . use of smokeless tobacco in the previous 30 days was four times as common among gay teens than straight ones. . . Fifty-nine percent of gay teens smoked cigarettes, compared to 35 percent of straight teens. . . 48 percent smoked cigarettes before age 13 . . "Gay, lesbian and bisexual adolescents face tremendous challenges growing up physically and mentally healthy in a culture that is often unaccepting," the researcher said.
  
  
• 05/04/98 Teens: Smoking Remedies Will Fall Short USA Today
  
  As a reality check on what may well be the highest-profile domestic issue of the year, USA TODAY last week polled the sophomore class at Fort Hill High School . . . The survey found that about one-fourth of the sophomore class smokes, with girls almost three times more likely to smoke than boys. Nearly one-third of the smokers say they started before they were teen-agers, at age 12 or younger. Their chief reaction to Washington's remedies, at least considered individually, was skepticism. Raising the price of cigarettes by $1.10 a pack won't deter many, though a price increase that gets a pack over $5 might. . . At 15 and 16, they say their smoking habits already are so entrenched that policymakers would do better to focus on their elementary-school siblings.
  Here's the article at the 05/08/98 Detroit News
  
  
• 05/04/98 NEW YORK: U.S. Retailers Agree To Help Curb Teen Smoking Reuters
  
  Under the agreements, CVS, Shell and Duane Reade will implement "mystery shopper" programs to test employee compliance, while K Mart agreed to move all of its tobacco products to a single, supervised store location to ensure that products are not being sold to minors.
  
  
• 05/05/98 OPINION: The Hispanic Youth Smoking Epidemic Elena Rios RIOS, president of the National Hispanic Medical Association. San Diego Union-Tribune
  
  Hispanic teen-agers are smoking more these days. Even more troubling, Hispanic eighth graders -- the youngest teen-agers -- light up more frequently than their white and African-American counterparts. A recent study showed that 18.3 percent of Hispanic eighth graders had smoked up during the previous 30 days. That compares to just 6.6 percent among African-Americans and 17.8 percent among white eighth graders.
  
  
• 05/08/98 FLORIDA: Kids Call The Shots In Florida Anti-smoking Campaign CNN
• 05/09/98 Teens Seek To Sell Peers On 'Truth' The LA Times article (below), at Contra-Costa (CA) Times
• 05/08/98 Teen-Driven Ad Campaign Puts Heat on Big Tobacco LA Times
  
  But what would happen if young smokers saw themselves not as cool, but as targets? As pawns, cynically manipulated in a corporate chess game? What if the brand they chose was not Marlboro or Camel but Truth? Those are the questions that may be answered over the next two years in Florida as the state begins to spend $50 million of Big Tobacco's money to pay for a teen-directed, guerrilla-style advertising campaign designed to reverse the rising rate at which young people are taking up cigarettes, cigars and chewing tobacco.
  
  
• 05/08/98 KENTUCKY: Cigarette Scene In School Play Burns Parents Lexington (KY) Herald Leader
  
  A TATES CREEK HIGH SCHOOL play director went on with the show last night even though a central office administrator had ordered that the play be rewritten. At issue was the use of a real cigarette in BYE BYE, BIRDIE. Ken Cox, Fayette County's director of high schools, ordered a rewrite to remove all mention of tobacco. In the end, play director KAREN BRINKERHOFF defied the order, but used a fake cigarette. The consequences of Brinkerhoff's actions aren't yet known.
  
  
• 05/10/98 There's No More Blair There Washington Post
  
  They're closing Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring . . let me take you back to life at Dale Drive and Wayne Avenue circa 1961-62 . . . There were no beatings. There were no stabbings. . . There might have been a fistfight or two each year, possibly out by "the Grove," a wooded area right at Dale and Wayne, where students were allowed to smoke cigarettes before school, at lunch and after school. (We were given complimentary cartons of cigarettes when we graduated, along with little miniature chests of drawers from a local furniture store. The tobacco companies wanted our business, and we wanted the cigarettes.)
  
  
• 05/13/98 NEW JERSEY: Health Chief Fights Tobacco Sale To Minors Bergen Record
  
  An undercover operation last month, in which seven of 18 merchants were given warnings for selling cigarettes to juveniles, underscores the need for more enforcement, said HENRY G. MCCAFFERTY, the city's health officer. "You're going to see a lot more [enforcement], and you can tell them that, too."
  
  
• 05/16/98 ARIZONA: Clerks Burned For Teen Tobacco Sales Arizona Daily Star
  
  "You're only 17,'' he told her when he saw her ID. ``Yeah,'' she replied. Looking around, he told her to ``Pocket 'em fast.'' . . The clerk's conduct surprised Tucson police reserve Officer Paul Howe a little, but not much. He and his daughter have seen a lot since they teamed up in November to find out how many stores are breaking laws by selling cigarettes to customers younger than 18. So far this year, 43 percent of approximately 200 stores hit by the police sting operation have sold to a minor
  
  
• 05/15/98 NEW YORK: Tougher Anti-tobacco Bills Sought Thirteenth New York News Report, UPI
  
  New Yorkers overwhelmingly support new curbs on tobacco. That's the finding of a survey released today by the Coalition for a Healthy New York. . . The Coalition is using the results of its poll to encourage the state Legislature to pass a package of bills that includes a ban on outdoor tobacco advertising near schools and child care centers, and a ban on cigarette vending machines.
  
  
• 05/15/98 VIRGINIA: No Quit In Youth Smokers The (DC Area) Journal
  
  In the lingo they are called "jacks," the Newports and Marlboro Lights that some students at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria puff on during lunch breaks and between periods. . . "Kids are going to keep smoking, no matter what," said Tony, 18, a senior at the school who said he goes through a pack of Newports about every 2 days. "You can't stop it." They would feel the same way, Tony and his friends said, even if the price of a pack of cigarettes were to go up by $1.50 or more.
  
  
• 05/15/98 MICHIGAN: Teen Smokers Face Tickets: Birmingham To Begin Zero-tolerance Policy Detroit News
  
  Police have a warning for underage smokers: Put the butts out or face criminal prosecution. Officers will begin a zero tolerance policy this month, and plan to ticket every underage smoker they find with cigarettes.
  
  
• 05/18/98 NORTH CAROLINA: New Class Tries to Warn Teens off Smoking AP/Raleigh News & Observer
  
  But students at North Davidson High School can take a smoking-cessation class for four days in an effort to learn more about the effects of smoking and how to beat the addiction to nicotine. Brandon, 15, is a freshman who began smoking when he was 8. Now, he usually has five cigarettes before he gets to school. . . The effort to stop underage smoking runs into some unique issues here. Some students' parents are tobacco farmers or work for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco. Many have parents who smoke. . . North Davidson's program was spread to the rest of the county's schools this year, and smoking-cessation classes are catching on statewide. The teenagers, however, say they think that the government is losing this battle.
  
  
• 05/18/98 MISSOURI: Rules Governing Tobacco For Minors Are Tightened St. Louis Post-Dispatch
  
  The BRENTWOOD Board of Aldermen has tightened the restrictions on the use of tobacco products by people younger than 18.
  
  
• 05/18/98 TEXAS: ALVIN Cuts Teen Tobacco Use With Crackdown, Classroom Houston Chronicle
  
  For the past two years, getting busted in Alvin could just as easily have meant being caught with a cigarette, a can of Skoal or maybe just a lighter or an empty, crumpled cigarette pack. Possession of any of the above by someone under 18 means a trip to tobacco education class.
  
  
• 05/18/98 COLORADO: Students Took A Deep Breath And Launched A Crusade Denver Post
  
  Class at West High located the enemy and used government to try to curb smoking
  
  
• 05/18/98CALIFORNIA: Outstanding In Their Fields Contra Costa (CA) Times
  
  TEN WOMEN received their due Saturday at the third annual Women of Achievement awards . . . Science and Health Care Merit winners: . . . Lisa Bautista-Rivera of Pittsburg, youth coordinator for Contra Costa County's Tobacco Prevention Project's TIGHT (Tobacco Industry Gets Hammered by Teens)
  
  
• 05/17/98 FLORIDA: New Anti-smoking Ads Tell Teens They're Targets LA Times/Seattle Times
  
  But what would happen if young smokers saw themselves not as cool but as targets? As pawns, cynically manipulated in a corporate chess game? What if the brand they chose was not Marlboro or Camel but Truth? Those are the questions that may be answered over the next two years in Florida as the state begins to spend $50 million of Big Tobacco's money to pay for a teen-directed, guerrilla-style advertising campaign designed to reverse the rising rate at which young people are taking up cigarettes, cigars and chewing tobacco.
  
  
• 05/17/98 KENTUCKY: Teens Say Nothing Can Stop Smoking Lexington (KY) Herald Leader
  
  
• 05/20/98 Disputed Statistics Fuel Politics in Youth Smoking The New York Times (This article was entered into the Congressional Record during Senate debate 05/20/98
  
  But only a few studies have tried to analyze how steps like price increases and bans on advertising affect youth smoking. And those have often produced contradictory results.
  
  
• 05/20/98 ARIZONA: Tobacco In The '90s Arizona Daily Star
  
  Her chamber is part of what is planned as a traveling exhibit, "TOBACCO, Reality and Images in the '90s," a collection of Canyon Del Oro High School student artwork that sends a strong message about the dangers of smoking.
  
  
• 05/20/98 NORTH CAROLINA: Winners: Smoking Students Graph in "If 'Seinfeld' Wasn't Funny" The Wall Street Journal (pay registration)
  
  A high school in Welcome, N.C., the heart of tobacco land, offers students caught smoking a three-day smoking-cessation class instead of detention.
  
  
• 05/19/98 Kids and Cigs: Like Moths to a Flame Fact sheet for kids, parents. Washington Post
  
  For You to Do Resisting pressure to smoke can be tough. Try rehearsing your reasons to refuse by role-playing with classmates or parents. There's a long list of reasons not to start smoking in the column above.
  
  
• 05/19/98 KENTUCKY: New Campaign to Fight Youth Smoking Launched in Kentucky PR Newswire
  
  Today marks the official launch in Kentucky of a unique partnership between the American Lung Association and the Humana Foundation to bring the Teens Against Tobacco Use (T.A.T.U.) program to thousands of students. Kerri Strug, an Olympic hero, headlines the kickoff event at Watterson Elementary School in Louisville.
  
  
• 05/19/98 ILLINOIS: HARVARD: Council To Vote On Plan To License Tobacco Sellers Chicago Tribune
  
  
• 05/21/98 MASSACHUSETTS: Tobacco Sales Called Key To Convenience Stores AP/Boston Globe
  
  Sales of tobacco products are crucial to the convenience stores that can be found in every corner of the state, business groups said as they argued against new rules on tobacco sales. Attorney General Scott Harshbarger wants to set regulations under the state's consumer protection laws to keep youths from getting cigarettes and to require warnings on cigars.
  
  
• 05/21/98 OHIO: DRAKE Would Set Age To Buy Tobacco At 21 Cleveland Plain Dealer
  
  The Republican senator - who quit smoking a week and a half ago - yesterday announced she had introduced a bill that will require retailers to get special licenses to sell cigarettes and other tobacco products.
• 05/21/98 Bill Would Make It Illegal To Buy Tobacco Until Age 21 Columbus Dispatch
• 05/21/98 Bill Would Raise The Age To Buy Cigarettes To 21 AP/Akron Beacon Journal
• 05/21/98 Bill Seeks To Raise Smoking Age Akron Beacon Journal
  
  
• 05/21/98 MISSOURI: BRENTWOOD: Board Tightens Guidelines On Tobacco-use By Minors St. Louis Post-Dispatch
  
  
• 05/21/98 NEBRASKA: Council Passes Tobacco Possession Ordinance KHAS, Hastings, NE/MSNBC
  
  Monday the Grand Island City Council passed and ordinance to discourage teens from smoking. The legislation, started by teens from various Grand Island high schools, makes it illegal to have tobacco products if you are underage. . . The law should be in effect for the next school year.
  
  
• 05/21/98 SOUTH DAKOTA: Lighting Up KDLT, Sioux Falls/MSNBC
  
  Are your kids lighting up? Well chances are pretty good that they have. 44- percent of South Dakota's high school students have smoked a cigarette in the past month
  
  
• 05/22/98 Teen-agers And Risks Repost of Oct. 6, 1997 article. Mayo Clinic/CNN
  
  But now an enormous research project offers a new perspective on high-risk behavior by adolescents -- a perspective that comes from the teen-agers themselves. The study concludes that the most effective way to protect young people from unhealthy or dangerous behaviors is for parents to be involved in their lives.
  
  
• 05/22/98 MAINE: Teen-age Smokers Describe Tobacco's Grip Portland Press-Herald
  
  
• 05/24/98 Can Pols Really Stop Teens From Smoking? A Hard Look At What Does And Doesn't Work June 1, 1998 US News
  
  
  
• 05/24/98 ILLINOIS: Teens Entrusted With Smokeless Mission Chicago Tribune
  
  The "Teens Against Tobacco Use" program was developed by the American Cancer Society, American Lung Association and American Heart Association. It designates teenagers as its tobacco-free messengers because impressionable students are more likely to listen to kids a few years older than them rather than "out-of-touch" adults. "Younger students look up to high school students," said Christine Mitchell, director of prevention services at Renz.
  
  
• 05/21/98 PREVIEW: WMMR: "WORLD NO-TOBACCO DAY" and "SELECTED CIGARETTE SMOKING INITIATION AND QUITTING BEHAVIORS AMONG HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS" CDC. This is an abstract. You can get a 241k pdf file of the report here No text file is provided(!)
  
  
• 05/21/98 White House, CDC Release New Statistics on Teen Smoking US Newswire
• 05/22/98 Most Teen Smokers Try To Break Habit Richmond Times-Dispatch
  
  In a survey of more than 16,000 students nationwide, nearly 73 percent with a daily habit said they had tried to quit. But only 13.5 percent stopped, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The study shows "that kids not only start as teens but also want to quit as teens," said Michael Eriksen
• 05/21/98 A Third Of Teen Smokers Develop Habit Reuters
• 05/21/98 U.S. says daily smoking starts in high school Reuters
  
  "The process of experimentation, addiction, desire to quit, trying to quit, and failure, for the most part, all occurs before high school graduation . . This little tragedy plays its course before high school graduation, and then it repeats itself over the years . . . We're really not well-prepared to help kids who have become addicted and want to quit. We have very little to offer in the way of cessation services that are effective with young people," [Erickson] said.
• 05/21/98 U.S. Tracks Teen Smoking Habits AP
  
  In a survey of more than 16,000 students nationwide, nearly 36 percent who had ever smoked said their smoking escalated to at least a cigarette per day, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. Nearly 73 percent with a daily habit said they had tried to quit. But only 13.5 percent successfully stopped, the CDC said. "That's strictly a testimony to the power of nicotine," said Michael Eriksen, director of the CDC's Office of Smoking and Health. "We were really struck by how this little drama of tobacco addiction really is completely played out before high school graduation."
• 05/21/98 CDC: 1 in 3 High Schoolers Smoke AP
  
  One in three high school students who try smoking even once develop a daily habit before they graduate, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday. Like Ledford, most high school smokers say they've tried to quit. And most fail. "It's a very bad habit, it's so incredibly addictive," Ledford said. "The first thing you notice is you start to want one really bad when you don't have one."
  
  
• 05/26/98 More Teens Just Say Yes to Smoking Washington Times Weekly
  
  "I used to run track, but I can't anymore because I can't breathe."
  
  
• 05/24/98 Can Pols Really Stop Teens From Smoking? A Hard Look At What Does And Doesn't Work June 1, 1998 US News
  
  
• 05/28/98 WISCONSIN: 1997 YOUTH RISK BEHAVIOR SURVEY - Tobacco April, 1998
  
  
• 05/28/98 FLORIDA: Summit On Teen Smoking Set For Saturday In Naples Naples Daily News
  
  Heads up, teen smokers: About 100 or more of your peers will be gathering Saturday to develop strategies to get you to quit smoking and to prevent other teens from taking up the habit. A daylong Teen Tobacco Summit in Naples is bringing teens together from middle and high school levels to learn the facts about smoking and its effects.
  What, Where When
  
  
• 05/28/98 UTAH: CENTERVILLE Stores Put Cigarettes Behind Counter Salt Lake Tribune
  
  Teen smoking just got tougher in Centerville, and juvenile offenders have only their peers to thank. At the request of Centerville's Youth City Council, the city has passed an ordinance requiring retailers to keep cigarettes and chewing tobacco locked away behind counters to reduce the threat of shoplifting.
  
  
• 05/27/98 WISCONSIN: Teens Find Tobacco Promotion Near Schools, Playgrounds AP
  
  Businesses near playgrounds, schools and day care centers had 22 percent more tobacco advertisements than other retail establishments, a survey by teen-agers says. The researchers found " candy next to chewing tobacco at one store and that sends a clear message to kids, " Al Bliss, health educator for the La Crosse County Health Department, said. The survey was conducted Feb. 28 by Teens Against Tobacco Use. The report says 58 percent of tobacco retail establishments had tobacco advertisements next to candy and at a level of 3 feet or below.
  
  
• 05/27/98 MICHIGAN: Clearing The Air; High School Students Reaching Out To Help Youngsters Avoid Tobacco (Jackson, MI) Citizen-Patriot
  
  "They're starting to smoke at younger and younger ages, it's scary," said Browning, a junior at Jackson High School. "If I can stop just one from starting, then that's great." Browning helped form an anti-smoking group at Jackson High called TATU - Teens Against Tobacco Use. A national organization, TATU is a group for teens who want to help spread the anti-smoking message. They do so by visiting elementary schools and talking about the dangers of smoking. The three-week program runs for an hour once a week
  
  
• 05/27/98 MINNESOTA: Washington County Hopes New Law Will Help Reduce Teen-age Smoking St. Paul Pioneer Press
  
  The ordinance bans tobacco vending machines and single-pack self-service sales, and it requires clerks who sell tobacco to be age 18 or older. Despite these restrictions, no one spoke against the measure at a public hearing Tuesday. . . The new rules take effect July 1 if the board gives final approval on June 2
  
  
• 05/28/98 OPINION: Raising Cigarette Price Unlikely To Stop Teens Elizabeth Auster, Cleveland Plain Dealer
  
  Now, looking back, I think he might have been more effective if he had been more strategic - if he had focused less on convincing me that smoking was unwise and unhealthy, and more on convincing me that it was uncool. . . My advice to federal officials: If you want to discourage smoking, focus on what really attracts people to cigarettes. Try getting the respect of the people you want to influence, instead of their money.
  
  
• 05/29/98 PENNSYLVANIA: N. Allegheny Oks Smoking Rules Meeting Briefs, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
  
  The NORTH ALLEGHENY SCHOOL BOARD is clearing the air on its smoking policy. The board voted unanimously Wednesday in favor of two tobacco policies that make the district smoke-free during the day and beef up punishment for students caught smoking. . . The second policy brings the district in line with a state law that sets a fine of $50 for students caught with tobacco products on school grounds at any time.
  
  
• 05/29/98 MINNESOTA: ROSEVILLE: Briefing St. Paul Pioneer Press
  
  4 tobacco sellers to be cited Four of Roseville's 48 licensed tobacco sellers will be ticketed for selling tobacco products to minors this month in the latest round of compliance checks, Roseville police said Thursday. Last year retailers achieved 100 percent compliance in the first round of checks, but five establishments failed the second round, Deputy Chief Tom Alleva said.
  
  
• 05/29/98 CALIFORNIA: Students Push For Self-service Tobacco Ban LA Times
  
  Armed with a slew of statistics about teenage smoking, a group of Estancia High School students hope to persuade the City Council to enact a ban on self-service tobacco displays in local stores. Spurred by an anti-smoking campaign sponsored by the Camp Fire Boys and Girls of Orange County, called Speak Out, the students enlisted their teachers, administrators, friends and family members to write letters to local officials urging them to establish the ban.
  
  
• 05/30/98 COLORADO: New Law Strengthens Youth Tobacco Prohibition Enforcement Business Wire
  
  COLORADO GOV. ROY ROMER will sign House Bill 1387, which changes the way the state enforces the prohibition against selling tobacco products to persons under the age of 18, on June 1. . . The new law changes the penalty from a criminal (class 2 petty offense) to a civil penalty and process, and also designates the liquor enforcement division in the Department of Revenue as the lead state enforcement agency.
  
  
• 05/31/98 FLORIDA: Teens Take A Stand Against Smokes At Tobacco Summit
  
  More than 60 teen-agers stood on their chairs Saturday and told off Big Tobacco - with their own big shouts and screams. "Smoking kills. Dip does too. We won't do it. How about you?" The COLLIER COUNTY TEEN TOBACCO SUMMIT held at the Telford Auditorium in Naples brought together young people from local middle and high schools to learn about smoking and its effects - from each other.
  
  
• 06/01/98 RHODE ISLAND: Teens Underestimate Risk Of Addiction To Cigarettes Providence Journal Bulletin
  
  Smoking by young people in Rhode Island is rising as subtle tobacco ads associate glamour and fitness with cigarettes.
  
  
• 06/01/98 NEW JERSEY: Measure Would Ban Smokeless Tobacco In Schools AP
  
  With cigarettes already banned in public schools throughout New Jersey, lawmakers now are going after another nicotine no-no: smokeless tobacco. A measure approved by the Assembly Health Committee Monday would ban smokeless tobacco from public schools.
  
  
• 06/01/98 MISSOURI: Teen Smoking Is Targeted: Black Leaders Want Tobacco Billboard Ban St. Louis Post-Dispatch
  
  African-American religious leaders called on Sunday for a ban on tobacco billboards near homes, schools, churches and wellness and recreation centers in the city. The ST. LOUIS CLERGY COALITION, representing 13 denominations and more than 47,000 parishioners, wants the St. Louis Board of Aldermen to pass an ordinance banning the billboards in residential areas.
  
  
• 06/01/98 MISSOURI: Teens Could Pay Penalty Under Bill St. Louis Post-Dispatch
  
  Cities and counties could get tough with teen-age smokers under a bill awaiting the governor's signature. The proposal would allow municipal court charges to be filed against youths under 18 who were caught possessing or using tobacco products. . . Rep. Michael Gibbons, R-Kirkwood, added the municipal court provision to a bill dealing with the judiciary. He said it would give local officials a new way to discourage smoking by children. Attorney General Jay Nixon agreed, calling the bill "an important step forward." He noted that children are barred from buying cigarettes. "Winking at that law has put Missouri in a situation where we're above the national average in high school kids who use tobacco," he said.
  
  
• 06/01/98 INDIANA: Rural Youths Drink, Smoke More, Study Says Indianapolis Star/News
  
  Stronger public-private partnerships and better coordination of rural health care efforts are needed to curb the use of alcohol, tobacco and illicit drugs by Indiana's rural youths. . . The RURAL INDIANA PROFILE was prepared by DRUG STRATEGIES, a nonprofit policy research institute based in Washington, D.C. The study was begun at the request of U.S. REP. LEE HAMILTON, D-Ind., because he was worried about drug use in rural Indiana.
  
  
• 06/01/98 ARIZONA: Anti-smoking Campaign Targets Teen Moviegoers Arizona Daily Star
  
  "Popular culture, whether it's music or the movies, has a tremendous influence on the youth of America," said Brad Christensen, communications director for the Arizona Department of Health Services. . . The anti-tobacco ads, which will play in 50 Arizona theaters, will slip in between the trivia questions of pre-film slide shows. The department plans to have the advertisements premiered around the state by today, Christensen said. The movie-house move, which includes attacks on the portrayal of cigarettes and chewing tobacco in movies, is the latest step in the state's $50 million effort to stamp out teen smoking.
• 06/01/98 Local Bus Stops To Sport Anti-smoking Message Arizona Daily Star
  
  Anti-smoking groups FULL COURT PRESS and TOBACCO-FREE WAYS announced yesterday that 50 Tucson bus benches will feature local artists' interpretations of the theme: "For Youth by Youth, Seeking a Solution Not to Choose."
  
  
• 06/02/98 1st Issue of THE YOUTH CONNECTION Released by INSTITUTE FOR YOUTH DEVELOPMENT; Publication Explores `Connections that Affect Choices of America's Youth' PR Newswire
  
  "During more than a decade of work in the AIDS issue with children and families, we witnessed the devastation of a lot of fine people ... (and) realized first-hand that behaviors which put young people at risk for HIV and other STDs were interrelated. Simply attacking one behavior neither fully resolved it, nor significantly impacted any others." So writes SHEPHERD SMITH, founder and president of the Institute for Youth Development (IYD), in the inaugural issue of THE YOUTH CONNECTION. "Consequently, we felt a comprehensive message, targeting the main areas of risk behavior for youth today -- alcohol, drugs, sex, tobacco, and violence -- was imperative. We also saw a need for a consistent message: risk avoidance across the board. No mixed messages."
  
  
• 06/02/98 TEXAS: WACO: Police Issue 28 Tobacco Citations Waco Tribune-Herald
  
  In their first week of tobacco compliance enforcement, Waco police issued 28 tickets to stores caught in violation of the state's tough new tobacco laws. Two teams of Waco police officers began intensive tobacco enforcement during the Memorial Day weekend, initiating a number of sting operations targeting the more than 120 convenience stores licensed to sell tobacco products in the city.
  
  
• 06/03/98 CALIFORNIA: Orange County Chapter Of The Public Relations Society Of America Wraps Its Arms Around Community Youth Not as scary as it sounds. PR Newswire
  
  The Orange County chapter of the Public Relations Society of America is demonstrating its dedication to community relations by engaging in a two-part public service program focused on community youth: CAMPAIGN FOR TOBACCO-FREE KIDS, and Orange County On Track. OC/PRSA will dedicate its time and professional know-how to teach both youth advocate groups the skills involved in achieving successful campaigns.
  
  
• 06/04/98 Vice President Gore To Host Youth Tobacco Roundtable US Newswire
  
  Vice President Gore will host a roundtable discussion with children and teens on tobacco. WHERE: The White House, The Roosevelt Room WHEN: Friday, June 5, 12:30-1:30 p.m. (EST)
  
  
• 06/04/98 ILLINOIS: RICHMOND: Village Board May Strengthen Law Against Teenage Smokers Chicago Tribune
  
  The Richmond Village Board is working on an ordinance that would make it tougher for teens to smoke within the village borders. Board members Wednesday night reviewed a draft ordinance that would make it illegal for anyone under age 18 to possess tobacco products outside the home. It was tabled, and the board is expected to take it up again at a meeting June 17.
  
  
• 06/04/98 CALIFORNIA: Fair rewards children for taking DARE LA Times
  
  An estimated 2,000 Newport-Mesa elementary school students who learned about dangers of drug participate in event at OCC.
  
  
• 06/04/98 VIRGINIA: Smoking Out Sales to Minors Washington Post
  
  Teenagers participating in a project to monitor cigarette sales to minors in Loudoun County found that they were able to make purchases in 13 of the 51 stores they visited. The survey, supervised by Loudoun's Office on Youth, was designed to educate store clerks and the community, county officials said.
  
  
• 06/04/98 WASHINGTON: MARYSVILLE Adopts Anti-tobacco Rule [Everett, WA] Daily Herald
  
  [A] new city ordinance takes effect June 11. The ordinance, which incorporates state legislation passed earlier this year, prohibits minors from possessing cigarettes and other tobacco products. Those caught carrying tobacco could face a $50 fine, four hours of community service and an order to enroll in a smoking cessation class.
• 06/04/98 City Adopts Anti-tobacco Rule AP
  
• 06/06/98 FLORIDA: Student's Message Leaps Out Florida Times-Union
  
  Frogs and cigarettes are an unlikely combination. But not for 11-year-old Holly Ballinger, who used the two as inspiration to design her anti-smoking poster and won first prize for the state of Florida. The fifth-grade student from Kings Trail Elementary School won a trip to Kansas City, Mo., with a family member, where her poster will be judged among other states' winners as part of the Tar Wars National Education Program. . . At the top it said, "If you don't want to croak, don't smoke."
  
  
• 06/05/98 Gore, Teens Talk of Smoking Hazards AP
  
  About 30 students met with Gore to discuss their experiences with school anti-tobacco programs and suggested why some teens start smoking. Just watching a friend smoke can persuade some teens to pick up a cigarette, said Amanda Tunnell, 16, of Oklahoma City. "It's as simple as that," she said. "It's just like another action that they did, like something they wear, something they buy that you want to go and do that because you want to be accepted."
  
  
• 06/08/98 NEW YORK: Empire State Roll Call Report Business First of Buffalo
  
  Bill S1931. Sponsor: LIBOUS Prohibits any person under the age of 18 from possessing tobacco in any form, including cigarettes, cigars, pipe tobacco and "smokeless" tobacco. Sanctions for any minor violating the law include a maximum fine of $50, community service, and attendance at a course of instruction concerning the dangers of tobacco use.
  
  
• 06/08/98 VIRGINIA: It's Anyone's Guess Whether Va. Youths Smoke More, Less Or Same Richmond Times-Dispatch
  
  "We're flying blind," said LAURA WIMMER, director of youth health education at the Virginia Council of the American Cancer Society. "It's very frustrating." The frustration dates back to 1994 when WILLIAM C. BOSHER JR., who then was Virginia's superintendent of public instruction, opted out of a national survey of youth behaviors conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Bosher today is superintendent of Chesterfield County schools.) The YOUTH RISK BEHAVIOR SURVEY polled 16,262 students across the United States in 1997. It asked questions about drinking, smoking, sexual conduct, domestic violence and the use of seat belts.
  
  
• 06/09/98 OHIO: CLEVELAND: White Says Illegal Tobacco Sales Down Cleveland Plain-Dealer
  
  Almost two years after Cleveland started cracking down on merchants who sell cigarettes to minors by holding "tobacco sweeps," Mayor MICHAEL R. WHITE said yesterday that the program had significantly reduced the number of illegal tobacco sales. During the first sweep in August 1996, 58 percent of the stores where teens tried to buy cigarettes sold to them. In the fourth sweep - the week of April 28 - only about 25 percent, or 32 of 127 vendors, sold cigarettes to minors, White said.
  
  
• 06/09/98 Seattle Youth to Demonstrate New Teen Health Website: Business Wire
  
  http://weber.u.washington.edu/~ecttp Several Seattle high school students will launch a new web site dedicated to teen health issues Tuesday. . . I think the site will be a valuable resource for teens," said Adam Percival, a Garfield student who participated in the sites development. "For example, in the section I worked on, they could get a lot of facts about tobacco and learn how tobacco companies manipulate young people into smoking."
  
  
• 06/11/98 CALIFORNIA: SANTA ROSA: Smokers Must Take New Class On Health
  
  The Santa Rosa City Schools board Wednesday night approved the program, which requires first-time and repeat offenders to take a four-hour class conducted by the Drug Abuse Alternatives Center. Staff members with the drug-abuse center will provide continuing support to help students quit using tobacco products.
  
  
• 06/16/98 NEW JERSEY: HADDON TWP. Plans Tough Tobacco Law Philadelphia Inquirer
  
  The Board of Commissioners introduced an ordinance last night that would make it illegal for anyone under the age of 18 to possess any form of tobacco products, including smokeless tobacco.
  
  
• 06/15/98 OHIO: Too Many Alternatives Cleveland Plain Dealer
  
  The first year at the LORAIN COUNTY ALTERNATIVE SCHOOL was tumultuous. . . In the school's first year, just ended, two students dumped a classmate into a trash can. Two others broke into the teachers' lounge and stole $20 from a staff member. A lack of structure, intended to help students who rebel against rules, actually left room for shouting, smoking and fighting, all of the problems the school was trying to address.
  
  
• 06/14/98 MICHIGAN: REESE Teacher Rewards Class For Quitting Bay City Times
  
  "Ms. Smith helped me drop the habit before it got too bad," said Kasey A. Gruber, 16, one of 12 students in Smith's sociology class at Reese High School in Tuscola County. Four of the students in March quit smoking after Smith offered the whole class a reward - such as a pizza party or ice cream sundaes - for every 15 days the smokers avoided cigarettes. On June 4, the last day of school, Smith bought the class breakfast after each of the four went smoke-free for 90 days.
  
  
• 06/11/98 LETTERS: From the Mailbag -- Teens on Smoking; The Limits of a Law NY Newsday
  
• 06/17/98 WASHINGTON COUNTY To Take Another Look At Tobacco Law St. Paul Pioneer Press
  
  On Tuesday, Commissioner Dennis Hegberg asked the county's health department to re-examine the language that prohibits minors from selling cigars, cigarettes and chewing tobacco and to look at a possible date for another public hearing on the issue. . . "I've had numerous calls from employers," Abrahamson said during the county board meeting Tuesday morning at the Washington County Government Center. "We're talking about the possibility of hundreds of (young people) losing jobs. I think it's something we goofed up on. We never intended anyone to lose their job. I think we should at least have another hearing."
  
  
• 06/17/98 UK: Adverts Do Have Effect, Say Young Smokers Electronic Telegraph
  
  TEENAGE smokers admit that they are influenced by cigarette advertising and tobacco industry sponsorship of sport, a survey says. The study of the lives of more than 37,000 children aged nine to 16 found that 71 per cent of those who described themselves as occasional smokers said they were swayed by advertising. More than a third of the smokers said that advertising had "quite a lot" of influence on their decision to smoke. The findings, contained in the annual Young People survey conducted by Exeter University, will intensify the debate on tobacco advertising and sponsorship.
  
  
• 06/17/98 Teen Life On The Straight Edge Graph in Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune
  
  All this, however, is only part of the rebellion. For the bands onstage and an overwhelming majority of the 130 youths in the room, the rest is a social credo as conservative as any fretful parent might relish. No booze. No tobacco. No drugs. No casual sex.
  
  
• 06/17/98 Girls Close Gender Gap in Ways Welcome and Worrying Washington Post
  
  Ruth Newlin of the American Lung Association said girls regularly use smoking to control their weight. She blames the increase in girls' smoking in part on increasingly aggressive marketing. Trinkets, such as charm bracelets, that some cigarette companies award to regular customers appeal to girls and not grown women.
• 06/17/98 Teen Girls Still Making Bad Health Choices Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune
• 06/17/98 Teenage Girls Checkup Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune
  
  Smoking: Girls are now as likely as boys to smoke cigarettes; more than one in five eighth-grade girls report that they smoke.
• 06/16/98 Progress Mixed for Teen Girls AP
  
  Life has gotten better in some ways for adolescent girls, who are doing better in school and having fewer babies, a report concludes. But many problems remain: Girls are smoking more, are often depressed and are playing sports less often than they used to. "There have been great strides but there remains tremendous work to do," said Linda Basch, executive director of the National Council for Research on Women, which released its report Tuesday. . . The percentage of eighth-grade girls who smoke increased from 13 percent in 1991 to 21 percent in 1996.
  
  
• 06/16/98 AUDIO: Reducing Teen Smoking NPR
  
  As NPR's Vicky Que reports in the first of two stories for Morning Edition, government health officials say at this point no anti-smoking programs have proven successful or safe enough to be used on teens. And listen to part 2, in which NPR's Debbie Elliott reports that while public health officials say they need greater resources to fight the tobacco industry's marketing strategy that makes smoking seem glamorous, some researchers say the difficulty could be in the approach.
  
  
• 06/18/98 FDA Launches Home Page For Kids Reuters
  
  Kids have a new Internet home page designed to teach them about health -- the US Food and Drug Administration's "FDA Kids' Home Page." The website, which went on-line in May, covers a wide range of health-related topics, from the wonders of the human body to the reasons for using toothpaste. Visitors can read about the hazards of smoking . . .
  
  
• 06/18/98 CALIFORNIA: S.F. Teens Trying High-Nicotine `Bidi' Cigarettes San Francisco Chronicle
  
  The cigarettes, called "bidis" -- also "beedies" and "beadies" -- are manufactured in India and are widely available in grocery stores in paper-wrapped bundles of 20 for as little as $1.25 a pack. Results show that 58 percent of students surveyed at four city high schools had tried bidis at least once and that two-thirds knew someone under the legal age of 18 who had purchased them.
  
  
• 06/18/98 DC: Students Fighting Drugs With Store Posters; ANACOSTIA Campaign Seeks to Reduce Sale of Paraphernalia, Tobacco, Cheap Liquor
  
  Thomas Gore, a vice president of the Anacostia Coordinating Council, said the group is "trying to improve this community by reducing the sale of drug paraphernalia, alcohol, tobacco and loose cigarettes to students."
  
  
• 06/19/98 NEW JERSEY: Assembly Bill Would Punish Teenagers Caught With Tobacco Bergen (NJ) Record
  
  "Our hope is that by outlawing underage smoking we will be able to reduce the number of teens who currently smoke and dramatically reduce the number of teens who would have begun to smoke," said Assemblyman Joseph Suliga, D-Union, co-sponsor of the legislation with Assemblyman Guy Gregg, R-Morris. "We cannot accept the status quo. We cannot sit back and allow children to fall prey to this deadly addiction."
  
  
• 06/19/98 FLORIDA: Anti-tobacco Ads Show Teens Bitter Truth Miami Herald
  
  The dangers of tobacco are being proclaimed on billboards, radio, television and in print in a $50 million, two-year youth anti-smoking drive. The money comes from last August's $11.3 billion settlement between Florida and tobacco companies. Each medium in the campaign carries a different type of message. But the billboards, which first appeared in Miami-Dade this month, are raising some eyebrows. Using statistics compiled by the campaign, they show on a scoreboard that there were 430,700 tobacco-related deaths in 1995, compared with 43,363 auto fatalities, 43,115 AIDS-related deaths and 22,895 murders for that year.
  
  
• 06/20/98 OHIO: Buying Smokes Is Easy For Teens
  
  An under-age teen who tries to buy cigarettes in Hamilton County has about a one in three chance of succeeding, according to a new survey. Restaurants and drug stores appear to be the easiest places for youths under 18 to buy tobacco products; convenience stores and gas stations are among the toughest locations to buy the items. The Norwood Health Department and Hamilton County General Health District released the findings Thursday on results of a random test of how well businesses are following laws that forbid the sale of tobacco products to minors.
  
  
• 06/19/98 UK: Age Cards To Stub Out Child Smokers The Mercury (Herts & Essex Newspapers)
  
  BUYING cigarettes could become harder for under-age smokers in Cambridgeshire. Trading standards chiefs say teenagers will have to carry proof of age cards in a bid to clamp down on illegal tobacco use by under-16s. Mug shots, a date of birth and a 16-plus logo may feature on the passes. The idea was agreed at a Cambs County Council environment and transport committee meeting last Thursday, and could be in place by next year.
  
  
• 06/21/98 FLORIDA: Tobacco Settlements Now Funding The Fight Against Underage Smoking WBBH NBC 2 Fort Myers, FL/MSNBC
  
  Millions of dollars in settlements with big tobacco are now paying local police to go after kids who smoke. Part of Governor Chiles' anti-smoking campaign is that local agencies simply have to sign on with the state, and the money is theirs. However, one sheriff's office is saying no to the program.
  
  
• 06/21/98 MICHIGAN: Teen-agers' Penchant To Puff Threatens To Send Their Future Up In Smoke Grand Rapids Press
  
  "I thought I could quit any time I wanted," Bechtold says. "I can't." "When I was 14 I tried to quit. That lasted three days. Every other month I try to quit."
  
  
• 06/22/98 MICHIGAN: Cops Plan Tobacco, Beer Stings Detroit News
  
  Wayne County Sheriff Robert Ficano said police in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Washtenaw and Monroe counties plan to meet today with leaders of the Associated Food Dealers of Michigan to discuss the program designed to cut teen tobacco and alcohol use. "We want a working partnership, an understanding of the law," Ficano said.
  
  
• 06/24/98 ILLINOIS: State Contracts With FDA To Reduce Tobacco Sales To Minors AP
  
  Retailers who sell cigarettes to minors may have some surprises in store for them in the coming months. State officials plan some 9,000 unannounced inspections of stores during the next 18 months, using underage shoppers trying to buy tobacco products, the Illinois Liquor Control Commission said Tuesday.
  
  
• 06/25/98 Teen Sees Will To Quit Go Up In Smoke Denver Post
  
  Jeff Eastridge stands at ground zero in the tobacco wars: He is 15, and he smokes. He has heard and read just enough to know that - on the surface, at least - it's all about him: the congressional skirmishing, the presidential posturing, the advertising dollars Big Tobacco plowed into public debate on last week's failed legislation to curb teen smoking. He sees the big picture. But he lives the little one.
  
  
• 06/25/98 OHIO: CHILLICOTHE'S Controversial Tobacco Law To Get Second Vote WCMH/MSNBC
  
  The Council voted 4-3 Monday to make it illegal for minors to buy, possess or use tobacco products in the city. But two city council members were not present for the vote, so the measure will have to be voted on again.
• 06/24/98 Chillicothe Adopts Tough Underage Smoking Measure WCMH Columbus, OH/MSNBC
  
  the City Council has made it illegal for minors to buy, possess or use tobacco products. The Council passed the measure 4-3 Monday night. . . Chillicothe Police Chief Jeff Keener says the city passed the law because before its passage, officers couldn't do anything to minors caught smoking. Keener says the law will allow officers to take the cigarettes away and notify a minor's parents that their child was caught smoking.
  
  
• 06/28/98 FLORIDA: 'Tobacco Police' Aim To Snuff Out Teen Smoking Naples Daily News
  
  Naples Police officer Ed Principe hands out two tickets to underage smokers at the Coastland Center mall Saturday. The undercover police officers catch teen smokers lighting up and issue a court summons where they may be fined $25 or ordered to do 16 hours of community service. Cameron Gillie/Staff
  
  
• 06/28/98 FLORIDA: Children Tell State How To Reach Children With Anti-tobacco Message Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
  
  The state of Florida received some marketing tips from 250 young people on Saturday about how to sell an anti-smoking message to other youths. "We know what young people want to see -- more youth talking to youth," said Senikkie Shaw, 17, of Okeechobee. "It's got to be in a language that kids understand." . . These insights were offered at the FLORIDA PILOT PROGRAM ON TOBACCO CONTROL MINORITY EXPO at Florida International University on Saturday.
  
  
• 06/29/98 SOUTH DAKOTA, COLORADO, HAWAII: New Summer Laws Crack Down on Teens AP
  
  South Dakota is raising the penalty for minors caught smoking from $20 to $200, and Colorado is doubling its $50 fine for teen-agers caught buying tobacco. Hawaii is raising its fines for people who sell tobacco to minors.
  
  
• 06/29/98 SPORTS: BASEBALL: Name Also Team's Message Lexington (KY) Herald Leader
  
  The boys on both sides yelled out their team name as they broke from the pre-game huddle: "Tornadoes!" "Smoking Kills!" Anti-smoking groups have been pushing that message for years, but now Mike Sawyer has put it where it may never have been before -- the baseball jerseys of 11- and 12-year-old boys. In a state that produces more burley tobacco than any other and has the highest adult and youth smoking rates in America, that's a curveball.
  
  
• 06/29/98 KENTUCKY: New Miss Kentucky Vows To Speak Out On Minors Smoking Lexington (KY) Herald Leader
  
  Add another tiara and another scholarship to Chera-Lyn Cook's extensive collection. Cook, 22, was crowned Miss Kentucky on Saturday night . . . As Miss Kentucky, she'll travel to scores of schools to speak out against under-age smoking.
  
  
• 06/30/98 CONNECTICUT: Town Approves Ban On Youth Smoking In Public Places AP
  
  The town has approved an ordinance that makes it a violation for anyone under 18 to light up in public. But the police department is less than enthusiastic about enforcing the ban. During a special meeting Monday night, the town selectmen voted 5-2 to approve the ban, the first of its kind in the state.
  
  
• 07/02/98 TEXAS: SAN ANTONIO: Police Launch Sting On Tobacco Sales San Antonio Express News
  
  San Antonio vice squad officers -- with the help of several teens acting as decoys -- are conducting a "sting" operation aimed at enforcing state and federal laws prohibiting the sale of cigarettes to people under age 18. Police officers went into 11 stores Wednesday. "Of the 11 locations we went to, six sold cigarettes to the minors," Sgt. Ed Adame said.
  
  
• 07/01/98 TEXAS: New Program Drives Teens To Quit Smoking Amarillo Globe
  
  Texas Department of Health officials on Tuesday unveiled the state's first anti-tobacco billboard. The billboard, erected near a school in Austin, drives home the message that people younger than 18 can lose their licenses for purchasing, possessing or using tobacco products. . . Dr. Philip Huang, chief of TDH's Bureau of Chronic Disease Prevention and Control, said students who helped develop the state's "Tobacco Is a Dead End" campaign indicated they know about the hazards of smoking but aren't as concerned about the possibility of getting lung cancer in 20 years as they are about possibly losing their licenses.
  
  
• 07/01/98 TEXAS: Program Targets Tobacco Merchants Dallas Morning News
  
  In a series of stings Tuesday, Danny - wearing jeans, a polo shirt and a baseball cap - tried to buy cigarettes from cashiers. When he succeeded, vice officers cited the store and the employee who made the sale. "It is your responsibility to know who you're selling to," Senior Cpl. W.R. Martin told a cashier cited for selling a pack of Marlboros to Danny in an Oak Cliff Chevron station. "Be aware. We're making spot checks."
  
  
• 07/01/98 NEW YORK: Rough On Anti-Puff Ads (New York) Daily News
  
  New York spent more than $850,000 on anti-smoking commercials that are roundly criticized by experts and ridiculed by teenagers who are the targets of most anti-smoking ads. . . At worst, the experts said, the ads--one of which resembles a political campaign commercial--could actually encourage teens to smoke.
  
  
• 07/01/98 NEW YORK: Rudy: I'll Snuff Out Illegal Sales (New York) Daily News
  
  The mayor called for the crackdown in response to a Daily News investigation that revealed that thousands of stores across the city are selling cigarettes to minors and many of the worst offenders avoid punishment. . . Make new store owners responsibile for violations racked up by previous owners, making it difficult for unscrupulous vendors to escape punishment by flipping their licenses.
• 06/30/98 N.Y. Cigarette War Packs No Punch (New York) Daily News
  
  Thousands of stores across the city regularly sell cigarettes to children as young as 14 ‹ and toothless anti-tobacco laws do little to punish the worst offenders. . . That's because . . . city and state officials have failed to aggressively enforce laws that allow them to yank the licenses of vendors for repeat sales to minors. The efforts have been so anemic that, in a city where as many as half the stores sell tobacco to teens, not one is under license suspension.
• 06/30/98 Cash Is All Kids Need to Buy a Pack (New York) Daily News
  
  The store has been cited four times for illegal sales of cigarettes to teens. Twice, city officials have suspended its license to sell tobacco. But relatives and associates of the owner quickly applied for and received new licenses. Nydia asked for a pack of Marlboros. The clerk pushed them across the counter. "It's almost always that easy," said Nydia.
  
  
• 07/01/98MARYLAND: MONTGOMERY Attacks Tobacco Sales to Minors Washington Post
  
  The Montgomery County Council approved the use of county inspectors yesterday to enforce laws barring the sale of tobacco products to minors. An enforcement drive will start next week. The council voted 8 to 0, with William E. Hanna Jr. (D-Rockville) absent, to approve a proposal by County Executive Douglas M. Duncan (D) to allow the Board of License Commissioners to perform checks at nearly 900 retail outlets that sell tobacco products in Montgomery.
  
  
• 07/01/98 MARYLAND: TANEYTOWN: Small-town Police Beat Graph in Baltimore Sun
  
  Jammed parking meter in front of City Hall? Chief Melvin E. Diggs -- who spent 25 years as a patrolman, detective and administrator in Baltimore -- is ready to empty it or replace it himself. With serious crime so low, Diggs and his seven officers can enforce laws that his big-city counterparts often must ignore, such as underage smoking (15 arrests in May) and seat-belt violations (124 tickets in May).
  
  
• 07/04/98 CONNECTICUT: SEYMOUR: New Law Targets Teenage Smokers Hartford (CT) Courant
  
  When JOHN O'TOOLE took a drag on his first cigarette, he and the other 10-year-olds huddled around the singed butt got busted by the neighborhood busybody. Mrs. O'Mara came upon the little rebels and told every one of their parents. "She may very well have saved our lives," said O'Toole, now 36, and Seymour's first selectman. He is the driving force behind a new town ordinance that outlaws teen smoking in public and effectively makes every Seymour police officer a potential Mrs. O'Mara.
• 07/04/98 Teen Smoking Ban Is Tough, But Some Doubt Its Effectiveness AP
  
  A town law that prohibits teen-agers from smoking in public is the strictest local tobacco law in the state. But whether it will work - that is, stop young people from smoking - is another thing.
  
  
• 07/06/98 UTAH Opens a New Front in the War Against Teen Smoking Christian Science Monitor
  
  Utah's Tobacco Court is the first of its kind in the nation . . . [t]he creation of Joseph Anderson, a judge in Utah's Third District . . Tobacco Court will work out of small claims court with volunteer, pro-tem judges. They will have the authority to levy fines as much as $250, require community service, and send youths to smoking-education programs. If the teens thumb their noses at the law, they can have their driving privileges suspended. "Our emphasis is to push them toward education," says Anderson. Tobacco Court will use a program called STTOP - Stop Teen Tobacco
  
  
• 07/05/98 Critics Say Tobacco Laws Aimed At Kids Have Proven Ineffective Scripps Howard
  
  Rather than helping to prevent youth smoking, laws that penalize minors have provided a smoke screen for an orchestrated effort by tobacco manufacturers and retailers aimed at guaranteeing a continued flow of tobacco to kids, anti-smoking advocates say. The new laws actually make it harder for communities to effectively prevent tobacco sales to minors and may help shield tobacco companies and retailers from liability for their actions, these experts say. "This is all about shifting blame and shifting responsibility," said William Godshall, executive director of SmokeFree Pennsylvania. "It has always been the tobacco industry and the tobacco retailers that have been the leading proponents of this."
  
  
• 07/05/98 UK: Retailers Back Teenage ID Card PA
  
  Shopkeepers are backing a national identity card for teenagers in a drive to stamp out under-age purchase of alcohol, cigarettes, scratch cards, fireworks, videos and solvents. The Citizen Card, which would bear a photograph and a hologram, would be a voluntary scheme available to youngsters aged 12 and above. It will start at age 12 because that is the first threshold when a child needs to prove they are old enough to see 12-certificate films and videos.
  
  
• 07/04/98 Teens Today Start Smoking For The Same Reason Teens Always Have: Coolness Aurora, IL Beacon News/St. Louis Post-Dispatch
  
  "It's a lot more complicated than we originally thought," Palumbo said. The key is to somehow get kids to realize what adults eventually learn, said Palumbo, who was a teen smoker herself before she quit in her 20s. "You think you look so cool and grown up and in fact you look ridiculous."
  
  
• 07/04/98 SPORTS: BASEBALL: Kids' Jerseys Say `Smoking Kills' AP
  
  A sign in the dugout was made with discarded cigarette butts and spells out the name of the kids' baseball teams that Mike Sawyer helped organize: Smoking Kills. "It's a good way for kids to learn early that smoking's bad for your health," said Lonietta Foster, whose 12-year-old son Kevin plays on one of the Smoking Kills teams.
  
  
• 07/07/98 CALIFORNIA: Bill Would Restrict Youth Informants UPI
  
  The state Assembly has passed legislation that would restrict law enforcement officers from using underage informants _ a bill inspired by the murder of a teenager who had acted a police drug informant. . . An exception would permit 15- through 17-year-olds to be used to catch merchants who sell tobacco to minors.
  
  
• 07/08/98 MINNESOTA: Business opposes ban on minor clerks selling tobacco St. Paul Pioneer Press
  
  The Washington County Board of Commissioners revisited its new youth tobacco ordinance Tuesday afternoon but couldn't take any action on a proposed amendment to change the ordinance's language due to the lack of a quorum. . . Commissioner Mary Hauser said the County Board should not be revisiting the issue, as the board had held a public hearing on the ordinance and had passed it unanimously June 2. "We have just passed the ordinance, and as I recall, it was 5-0," she said. "I find no reason to change the language. I find it very difficult and totally embarrassing to throw our entire public hearing process out. I would be loath to bring it up again, just because one segment of the population has an economic concern. We went through a public process, and that process is very important."
  
  
• 07/08/98 Call For Grade School Anti-smoking Programs Reuters
  
  NEW YORK, Jul 08 (Reuters) --Anti-smoking campaigns aimed at children should begin as early as elementary school, researchers say. "The prevailing smoking prevention strategy, which concentrates resources on middle school prevention programs for adolescents, overlooks the needs of children who are at risk for habitual cigarette smoking," conclude investigators at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Stanford University in Stanford, California.
• 07/06/98 Anti-Smoking Programs Should Start in Elementary School; Researchers Also Find Parents' Smoking as Important as Peer Pressure Health Education & Behavior PR, Center for the Advancement of Health
• 07/06/98 Study: Start Smoking Prevention Sooner UPI
  
  Researchers say certain children as young as 8 to 10 years old are at special risk of starting to smoke, and that for them, school anti-tobacco programs aimed at middle school students are too little, too late. A three-year study of 400 fourth, fifth and sixth graders finds the children at most risk are those whose parents smoke, and children who believe their parents don't care or know if they try cigarettes. Children who get lower grades at school, get into more fights, and have easier access to cigarettes at home also were found to be at special risk. The results are published in the August issue of Health Education and Behavior, a journal of the Society for Public Health Education.
  
  
• 07/07/98 OPINION: A Practical Way To Fight Teen Smoking Dick Morris, New York Post
  
  Last weekend, I conducted a national survey of 600 randomly distributed likely voters to test their attitudes on controlling teen smoking. I asked them to rate the effectiveness of various proposals to prevent teen smoking. "Licensing stores that sell cigarettes and revoking the licenses if they sell to teens" had the best score with, 60 percent predicting that it would be an effective way to curtail teen smoking. By 58 to 24 percent, smokers themselves felt that licensing would work to stop teen-agers from taking up the habit. "Banning cigarette ads and marketing aimed at teen-agers" had the second-best score, with 48 percent saying that it would be effective. Third best, at 43 percent, was "running ads urging teens not to smoke." Raising cigarette prices by $1.10 per pack and stopping tobacco ads from using characters like Joe Camel or the Marlboro Man were rejected as unlikely to curb teen smoking.
  
  
• 07/08/98 OPINION: stop Youth Smoking; It Prevents Addicted Adults Richard J. Rosen, Greensboro News & Record
  
  Tony Moschetti's letter mentioned that only 2 percent of cigarettes are consumed by teenagers (June 30). While this may be true, teenage smoking is much more important to the health of our citizens and to the tobacco industry than that percentage would imply. . . By preventing the 90 percent of smokers from becoming addicted to nicotine, one can eventually prevent 90 percent of the 400,000 deaths a year attributable to tobacco. I agree that alcohol and drugs are problems that should not be ignored, and they cause the deaths of innocent people, but the total damage from tobacco is greater.
  
  
• 07/09/98 TEXAS: RANDALL COUNTY: Sting Operation Nabs Store Clerks KAMR (Amarillo)/MSNBC
  
  Judge Phil Woodall's courtroom will be busy this week. Eight sales clerks have appointments to see him. The charge: selling cigarettes to minors. . . The Randall County Sheriff's Department has been running a tobacco sting since early May. Using teen customers, deputies caught clerks selling to minors. So far, they've swept 88 stores and 12 of those were in violation.
• 07/08/98 Store Clerks Cited In Tobacco Sting Amarillo Globe-News
  
  Citations were issued to 12 convenience store clerks who sold tobacco to minors during a weeklong Randall County sting that ended Monday night. "We bought tobacco at four businesses in Canyon, one outside in the rural part of the county and the rest of them in Amarillo," said Lt. Roger Short. According to Senate bill 55's Health and Safety code, clerks are required to card anyone under 27 years old. Short said each clerk faces a Class C misdemeanor charge for selling tobacco to a minor, which is punishable by a $500 fine.
  
  
• 07/08/98 FLORIDA: Youth-Influenced Anti-Smoking Effort Doesn't Mince Words The New York Times
  
  The new installments of the television, print, outdoor and interactive campaign, carrying over a theme centered on "truth," boldly assert that youngsters can resist the imagery that sells cigarettes if they understand the mendacious ploys being foisted upon them by the denizens of Tobacco Road, Madison Avenue and Hollywood. . . "We want to use our ads to pitch a different message," Perez said, "not that smoking is bad for you -- because we know that -- but that the industry is manipulating and targeting youth." . . Anti-smoking campaigns need to be "guerrilla advertising, a little under the radar," and "using the kids' language," said Alex Bogusky, partner, vice chairman and creative director at Crispin Porter.
• 06/20/98 Florida's Swat Sets An Example For A Nation At War With Tobacco St. Petersburg Times
  
  The SHOCK team flew in from New York this week to let Florida's SWAT (Students Working Against Tobacco) team know what they're doing to combat teenage smoking. . . But after hearing about what's going on in Florida, SHOCK was jealous. "We don't have anything like the kind of reach that this is going to have," said Tim LaPier, creator of the New York State's Youth Partnership for Health program.
  
  
• 07/10/98 MISSISSIPPI: Group Gets Peek At New Youth Law Biloxi (MS) Sun Herald
  
  METRIC DOCKINS THE SUN HERALD BAY ST. LOUIS - Coast law enforcement officers and area merchants were the first in the state to learn directly from the state Attorney General's Office how the new law governing tobacco sales to minors will affect their operations. About 30 people attended a session at the Bay St. Louis train depot Thursday on the Mississippi Juvenile Tobacco Access Prevention Act of 1997
  
  
• 07/10/98 WISCONSIN: When It Comes To Smoking, Kids Say It All Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
  
  The amazing thing about kids is that they can make a point with astounding clarity. When you smoke, you aren't cool. You are actually paying to kill yourself, wrote Travis Roeseler, a sixth grade student from Evans School in Fond du Lac. Travis was among 10 students who submitted a winning entry in the STATE MEDICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN'S anti-smoking essay contest. More than 700 creative and thoughtful essays flowed in from throughout Wisconsin.
  
  
• 07/12/98 CALIFORNIA: Assembly Won't Stop Prisons' Selling Tobacco To Teens Inland Valley, CA Daily Bulletin
  
  The California Department of Corrections is allowed to sell cigarettes to 16- and 17-year-old juveniles in state prison. Though selling cigarettes to minors is illegal, prisons are exempt. "It doesn't make any sense," said Assemblyman Fred Aguiar. "The fact of the matter is, we're spending millions and millions of dollars a year to get teens to stop smoking. We also prosecute business people who sell tobacco products to minors. It's absolutely wrong that the state should be able to sell tobacco products to minors."
  
  
• 07/12/98 ARIZONA: 15% Of Ariz. Teens, 14-17, Smoke, Study Says; National Rate Is Higher Arizona Daily Star
  
  The report by the state Department of Health Services shows that 15 percent of youngsters age 14 through 17 had at least one cigarette in the last month. That is less than half the national rate. Health Director James Allen credited the voter-approved 40-cents-a-pack tax on cigarettes for making the difference, both by raising the cost and by funding public education campaigns. But Brad Christensen, health department communications director, conceded there are no statistics to show whether Arizona's below-average rate has occurred since the 1994 change in law or has historically been true.
  
  
• 07/14/98 CALIFORNIA: VAN NUYS: Anti-Smoking Effort Underway at School LA Times
  
  A state-funded program designed to instruct kids in the art of teaching their peers that tobacco isn't cool kicked off Monday afternoon at Van Nuys High School. . . Under the TEENS AGAINST TOBACCO Use program, a school generally receives $35,000 to $45,000 to set up and maintain the project, depending on enrollment, Cannell said.
  
  
• 07/15/98 AUSTRALIA: Fine For Smokes Sale To Youth [Melbourne, VIC] Herald Sun
  
  A MILKBAR owner was yesterday ordered to pay $850 for selling cigarettes to a person under 18 ­ the first such prosecution in Victoria. Sunshine milkbar owner Mr Odyssa Diogenis, 48, became the first Victorian found guilty of illegally selling tobacco to a minor under a government-sponsored crackdown on underage smoking.
  
  
• 07/16/98 MISSISSIPPI: Vehicle To Help Fight Teens' Use Of Tobacco Biloxi (MS) Sun Herald
  
  City officials plan to use tobacco-settlement money to purchase a vehicle for sheriff's deputies that will be identified specifically as an anti-tobacco car. The purchase of the vehicle will come from $25,000 that will be allocated to D'Iberville as part of $5 million from the funds the state received in a settlement with major tobacco companies, said City Manager Alan Santa Cruz. "It will have a lot to do with making our stores and convenience store operators aware that they are being checked for selling to anybody underage," Santa Cruz said.
  
  
• 07/14/98 NEW YORK: Pol Aims at Sellers Of Cigs to Minors (New York) Daily News
  
  obacco merchants who sell to minors would lose their licenses under a three-strikes-and-you're-out system Rep. NITA LOWEY (D-Westchester) is drafting after a Daily News expose. Lowey's bill would create a new federal licensing system for all tobacco sales outlets ‹ including 25,000 in New York State ‹ imposing a $1,500 fine for a first sale to minors, $5,000 for the second and loss of license for a third.
  
  
• 07/15/98 FLORIDA: Community's Input Sought For Programs To Combat Teen Smoking Naples (FL) Daily News
  
  The COLLIER COUNTY TOBACCO-FREE PARTNERSHIP is asking community leaders and organizations to come up with prevention programs to combat teen smoking. Mini-grants of up to $15,000 will be available for the programs. About $50,000 is expected shortly from the state to fund these programs for the second half of the year, said Vivienne Niehaus, chairwoman of the coalition.
  
  
• 07/15/98 FLORIDA: Anti-smoking Program Takes River Cruise Florida Times-Union
  
  Free food, cool T-shirts, dancing, a hip 19-year-old motivational speaker - and no parents. Just the kind of ticket to draw kids to an event that could help save their lives, said Lori Bayler, Heather Young and Carmin Leach, high school students who are helping run Clay County's Tobacco-Free Partnership. . . The event is an Anti-Tobacco Riverboat Cruise, which will be held July 22 on the Lady St. Johns, one of the riverboats owned by the Jacksonville-based Annabelle Lee party boat company.
  
  
• 07/15/98 OHIO: Study Links Smoking To Hearing Loss PR Newswire
  
  A new study at the University of Wisconsin documents the link between hearing loss and cigarette smoking. Research now shows smokers face nearly twice the risk of developing hearing loss as do nonsmokers. In addition, people regularly exposed to passive cigarette smoke also have an increased risk of hearing loss. This is just one of the numerous reasons Tobacco-To-21 advocates are urging the passage of Ohio Senate Bill 221 -- which raises the age requirement to purchase tobacco products from 18 to 21 to combat skyrocketing youth smoking rates.
  
  
• 07/16/98 EDITORIAL: Good News, Bad News San Antonio Express News
  
  A new federal report on the state of America's children offers hope. . . Unfortunately, the number of young people smoking, drinking and taking drugs is on the rise again. Youths in all ethnic and racial groups are part of the trend. . . Congress could take a quick step forward by reviving the bogged down anti-tobacco legislation to reduce the number of children who start smoking.
  
  
• 07/15/98 EDITORIAL: Bust Kiddie Cig Sales (New York) Daily News
  
  Councilman John Fusco (R-S.I.) is pushing a bill, which has been sitting in the City Council since last year, that would significantly increase the penalties against vendors who sell to minors. It deserves passage. . . With one in three teens expected to die from smoking-related illnesses, according to health officials, something must be done to put the brakes on this growing problem. And that begins with stopping those who push cigarettes to kids.
  
  
• 07/15/98 OPINION: Refried Eggs Don't Fool Teens Sally Kalson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
  
  I say we stop positioning drugs as violent and dangerous, even though they are, and start casting them as immature and nerdy, or middle-aged and square. . . The best minds in advertising didn't make cigarettes sexy by saying they were good for you; they did it by subliminally linking them to the good life. Likewise, no ad campaign is going to make drugs unsexy by preaching that they're bad for you. They must be linked to something no teen wants to be. This is your brain (show egg). This is your brain on drugs (show Clinton and Gingrich grinning stupidly). Any questions?
  
  
• 07/17/98 VIRGINIA: Undercover Teenagers Recruited Reuters
  
  The state A-B-C Department is recruiting teenagers for undercover checks of retailers selling tobacco products. A-B-C officials are looking for 15