Brie Kane was only seven when she tried her first cigarette, really just a stale butt she found in her mother's ashtray. It made her sick, but not sick enough to stay away forever. Five years later, she and a friend began secretly sharing Marlboros in the backyard of Brie's home in Olney, Maryland. Now that she is 18, Brie sometimes goes through a pack of Misty Lights a day. Most of the people she knows--her sister, her parents, many of her school friends--are smokers too. "It's just something to do," she explains. Thrusting her hands into the pockets of her faded cutoffs, she repeats the battle cry of smokers everywhere: "If I really wanted to quit, I'm sure I probably could."
Much more certain, in fact, is a set of sobering numbers: 3,000 teenagers begin smoking every day, and of those, nearly 1,000 will die prematurely, according to the Surgeon General. Brie Kane's nonchalance aside, 72% of adolescent daily smokers who think they won't still be smoking every day five years from now are wrong. And while the number of adult smokers is steadily declining, teen smoking has increased. Among eighth graders, for example, the percentage of those who have smoked in the past 30 days increased 30% between 1991 and 1994. Findings such as these, combined with popular politics--polls show that even most adult smokers do not want their kids to pick up the habit--led President Clinton last week to instruct the Food and Drug Administration to draft a series of aggressive regulations to keep tobacco away from teenagers. His plan includes banning cigarette vending machines, outlawing tobacco billboards within 1,000 feet of playgrounds and schoolyards, restricting magazine advertising, requiring the tobacco industry to pour $150 million into a public education campaign and cracking down on underage cigarette sales.
Clinton's move cuts straight to the heart of the tobacco business. While the cigarette companies make some concessions to political pressure--last week, for instance, Philip Morris added the phrase UNDERAGE SALE PROHIBITED to its packages--the fact remains that they have a business motivation to replace the 2 million smokers who quit or die each year. The best way to capture new ones is to get them when they are young: of all adult smokers, 90% started smoking before the age of 20. This is why much of the tobacco industry's $6 billion worth of advertising contains an undeniable appeal to youth. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, after the Joe Camel advertising campaign, which depicts a camel wearing sunglasses and driving a fancy car, began in 1988, the proportion of teenage smokers who prefer Camels more than tripled. Said Clinton last week: "Does anyone seriously doubt that a lot of this advertisement is designed to reach children?"
While cigarettes hold an intrinsic appeal for kids convinced they are immortal and desperate to be cool, grass-roots antismoking campaigns across the U.S. have begun to show some promise. African-American groups have focused attention on the way certain ads and cigarette brands are aimed specifically at blacks and have enlisted churches, parents and school groups to combat underage smoking. The success rate has been phenomenal: according to 1993 figures, only 4.4% of black teens smoke, compared with nearly 23% of white teens.