David Bernt, a 17-year-old high school junior in the affluent Chicago suburb of Oak Park, remembers being one of the few who smoked in junior high school. "But now, if you go by there, it seems to be everywhere," he said.
Not everywhere, perhaps, but researchers calculate that teenage smoking rates, after declining in the 1970s and leveling off in the 1980s, have climbed sharply over the past five years.Although everything from why the trend began to what might stop it is disputed, it adds up to a huge health problem for the country and a public relations disaster for the tobacco industry. Indeed, the trend has played a crucial role in driving the once-intractable industry into negotiations for a global settlement with regulators and its legal adversaries. The negotiations are expected to resume Sunday.
Teenage smoking rates are still lower than in the 1970s. But the percentage of 12th-graders who smoked daily last year jumped 20 percent since 1991, to 22 percent, according to the most recent edition of the University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future Sur-vey, an annual study widely followed by tobacco researchers. The rate among 10th-graders jumped 45 percent, to 18.3 percent, and the rate for eighth-graders is up 44 percent, to 10.4 percent.
Five million people now younger than 18 will eventually die of tobacco-related illnesses, at current smoking rates, according to the most recent projections from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
If youth smoking rates had not climbed but instead continued downward to the lowest levels achieved by any segment of the teenage population in recent years - those for black teenagers in the early 1990s - fewer than 1 million of today's youths would be likely to die prematurely of tobacco-related illness, said Terry Pechacek, an epidemiologist in the Office on Smoking and Health at the disease-control agency.
Rising youth smoking rates have been cited by the Food and Drug Administration and President Clinton as evidence that the industry is marketing its products to youths and should be restricted by the FDA. They also are fueling demands in many states and nationally for higher taxes on tobacco, based on research showing price increases typically discourage teenage smokers more than adults.
And lawyers in both private class actions on behalf of adult smokers and in many of the 23 state lawsuits seeking compensation for Medicaid spending on tobacco-related illnesses have demanded restrictions aimed at reducing youth smoking in addition to financial compensation.
"A lot of this wouldn't be happening if youth smoking rates had been declining," said William No-vel-li, director of the National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids in Washington.
The center itself is a sign of the times, having emerged in the last year as the command station in Washington for much of the activity in the anti-tobacco movement, even though some tobacco critics say there is a danger in concentrating so much on children.
In the talks, the nation's two largest tobacco companies, RJR Nabisco and Philip Morris, have demanded near-total immunity from lawsuits in return for concessions including new advertising curbs, more government regulation and payments to compensate states and individuals for tobacco's health costs.
Steve Berman, a plaintiffs' lawyer from Seattle who represents attorneys general from four states involved in the talks, said that one proposal was to make the size of the cigarette producers' financial liabilities dependent on their contribution to lowering the youth smoking rates smoke by reducing advertising, marketing efforts and other means.
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said that the talks had involved what is being referred to as a "look back" provision that would kick in five to seven years after any settlement was approved, depending on smoking rates. Such a look-back might call for expanded federal regulation of the industry if youth smoking rates are not cut.
Just what has caused the teenage smoking rate to rise so sharply is hotly debated. The tobacco industry says the increase is due to a broad range of social forces. Industry officials note that other kinds of risk-taking among teens, especially use of marijuana and other drugs, have risen more sharply than tobacco use. The industry also cites teenagers' naturally rebellious reaction to the increasing efforts to stop them from smoking.
Critics of the tobacco industry agree that rebelliousness and other forces are at work. But they say the industry itself is the most important factor. The industry's spending on domestic advertising and promotions soared from $361 million in 1970 to $4.83 billion in 1994, the last year for which the Federal Trade Commission has published data, or 250 percent after adjusting for inflation.
Just how that huge pie has been divided is a secret closely guarded not just from critics but even among companies. Tobacco companies say they have adopted practices to focus their message on adults, such as requiring that all models be - and look - older than 25.
But critics like John Pierce, head of the Cancer Prevention Center at the University of California at San Diego, say what is most telling is that spending rose most rapidly in the 1980s, when the decline in youth smoking was halted.
The surge in teenage smoking in the 1990s coincided with a sharp expansion by both Reynolds and Philip Morris in giveaways of items like T-shirts in return for coupons accumulated by buying their cigarettes. Research showed that the companies had limited success in preventing distribution of the merchandise to children - 30 percent of teenage smokers have it - and that the items are just as appealing to teenagers as adults.