Tobacco.org

• High School Smoking Down 

Fewer Connecticut high school students are smoking these days, with the number using cigarettes dropping by about half over the past eight years, according to a state report being released today. . . .

"I think we're moving in the right direction in many areas," said Bonnie J. Edmondson, a health and nutrition consultant with the state Department of Education. "However, we still have a ways to go."

The most dramatic changes involve smoking. About one in six high school students, or 17 percent, reported smoking cigarettes in 2005, down from 35 percent eight years earlier and below the most recent national average of 22 percent, according to the Connecticut School Health Survey.

"In the '50s and '60s it was a cool thing to do, but now it isn't," said Rebecca Crosswaith, 18, a senior at Newington High School and a student member of the State Board of Education, which is scheduled to review the survey at a meeting in Hartford this afternoon.

"At least in my school, you hear students say, `Oh, I don't smoke - that's stupid,'" she said.

Smoking also declined among students at middle schools, where six percent reported smoking on the 2005 survey, compared with 10 percent on a similar survey of tobacco use among middle school students five years earlier.

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