Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 1, 1990 TAG: 9006010335
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: BEDFORD/FRANKLIN
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Dr. Antonia Novello, in her first major address on smoking, said more than 3,000 teen-agers become regular smokers each day.
She accused cigarette companies of spending $3.3 billion annually to advertise and promote their products in ways that appeal to children and adolescents.
A spokeswoman for the Tobacco Institute, interviewed later, said cigarette companies do not want children as their customers.
"For decades we have taken aggressive actions to keep cigarettes out of the hands of kids," Brennan Dawson said. She said advertising is not aimed at creating new smokers, but selling tobacco products to people who already smoke.
Novello's remarks came at a conference to stop smoking among minors held by the Interagency Committee on Smoking and Health National Advisory Committee. The program also featured speakers from the Pan American Health Organization, the Stop Teenage Addiction to Tobacco organization, and educators and law enforcement officials.
The program coincided with World No-Tobacco Day.
Novello said 44 states restrict the sale of tobacco products to minors.
"In six weeks, it will be 45," Dawson, the tobacco spokeswoman, said, noting that Kentucky recently passed such legislation. "We're not opposed to that."
But the surgeon general was critical of the enforcement of those laws, saying only five states have been able to provide statistical information of violations.
She quoted an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association as saying an estimated 1 billion packs of cigarettes are sold annually to children under 18 years of age.
"Because only a very small percentage of smokers begin smoking as adults, efforts at prevention must focus on children," Novello said.
"If current smoking rates were to continue in the United States . . . 5 million of the children now living in this country would die of smoking-related disease. That alarming statistic should be enough to raise this issue to the top of the public agenda," Novello said.
The national Centers for Disease Control also reported Thursday that an estimated 1 billion packs of cigarettes are sold to children each year. Only three states reported citations against 32 vendors last year and inspectors found only minimal enforcement of laws in the 44 states restricting children's access to tobacco, the CDC said.
Dawson said, however, that a recent government report released by the Department of Health and Human Services said about 50 percent of all smokers started the habit between the adult ages of 18 and 21.
"What causes teens to smoke is peer pressure and the influence of elders in a child's life," said Dawson. "Those are the issues that need to be addressed."
The tobacco spokeswoman said smoking among teen-agers is down. About 20 percent of all high school students now smoke, compared with 30 percent in the 1970s, she said.
But smoking among young women is up, said the surgeon general.
She said they now smoke at a greater rate than boys, according to the Annual Survey of Drug Use by High School Seniors, sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
"Lung cancer has already overtaken breast cancer as the number one cause of cancer death among women," Novello said. "If we fail to reduce smoking among girls, the epidemic of lung cancer among women will continue to grow well into the next century."
Dr. George Alleyne, of the Pan American Health Organization, said teen-age smoking is as big a problem in other parts of the Americas as in the United States.
"Despite some laws restricting advertising and access to tobacco, too many young people still consider smoking socially acceptable, partly due to clever advertising, linking smoking with fun," said Alleyne.
He said data on smoking in Latin America is incomplete, but arrangements were being made with the U.S. Office on Smoking and Health to do a report on "Smoking in the Americas."
by CNB