Health: Some youths have become activists to keep classmates from lighting up. The local movement mirrors state and national tre
Jump to full article: Los Angeles Times, 2002-06-09
Author: CARLA RIVERA, TIMES STAFF WRITER
Intro: She is a pest around her smoking friends, a blunt messenger of the ways smoking is just so uncool. And she is not alone.
In California, more than any other state, social pressure against lighting up has filtered to young people. That, along with costs and other factors, is driving smoking rates among teenagers to the lowest levels on record.
In 2001, only 5.9% of youths 12 to 17 reported smoking a cigarette in the previous 30 days, according to newly released data from the California Department of Health Services.
That compares to 11% in 1994, the first year such surveys were conducted.
California is leading a national trend that finds smoking rates falling sharply among teenagers, after a rise during the early 1990s. . .
A growing number of young people like Layza Lopez are involved in education programs designed by teens for teens.
"Kids have come to see a number of drugs as dangerous in the last several years; peer norms are changing, " said Lloyd D. Johnston, a principal investigator at the University of Michigan Institute of Social Research, which recently produced a national survey charting the decline in teen smoking.
"Also, during the time that Congress was considering tobacco legislation, there was a great deal of exposure of what was going on in the tobacco industry and kids saw themselves as being manipulated."
California has pioneered legislation limiting smoking in public places, chilling the climate for smokers of all ages. More young people in the state grow up in an environment that is far less tolerant of secondhand smoke and in homes where nonsmoking parents do not pass along the habit.
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