Date: Tue, 12 Sep 1995 08:56:52 -0400 (EDT) From: Competitive Enterprise Institute To: Recipients of the CEI List Subject: CEI List: Smoking Epidemic? THE EPIDEMIC THAT ISN'T By Michelle Maglalang Malkin, CEI's 1995 Warren Brookes fellow Appeared in *The Washington Times* Monday, August 14, 1995/ Pg. A19. In one of the countless anti-smoking missives published last week, Jimmy Carter warned: "We must not be tricked again." This is an apt, if unintended, admonition. For the Clinton administration's new regulatory offensive -- backed blindly by Jimmy Carter, Barry Goldwater and a broad coalition of anti- tobacco organizations -- is not an honest effort to rescue America's youth from the perils of puffing. It is yet another thinly-disguised attempt to puff up the federal government's public health powers by creating a phantom childhood epidemic. President Clinton cited an alarming rise in pre-teen and teen-age smoking as the impetus for his initiative: "The most important thing is that there is an epidemic among our children." Mr. Clinton's health managers echoed the sentiment. Food and Drug Commissioner David Kessler, whose powers will swell under the new plan, spoke of a "pediatric disease." Health and Human Service Secretary Donna Schalala lamented that attempts to reduce underage smoking have failed. And Michael Eriksen, director of the Surgeon General's Office on Smoking and Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention proclaimed: "There is absolutely no question that teen smoking rates are on the rise. The only people who are denying this are the spokespersons for the tobacco industry." But is there an epidemic? Tobacco flacks aren't the only ones who are questioning the administration's allegations. Anyone who has diagnosed the White House's bad habit of using children to justify federal power-grabs (recall the vaccine warehouse fiasco?) knows better than to accept manufactured claims of childhood health epidemics on faith alone. The most-oft cited data on youth smoking comes from the University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future project, a federally funded study initiated 20 years ago. Last month, university researchers released highly-publicized statistics showing incremental increases in lifetime, daily and occasional (one or more cigarettes over a 30-day period) use by eighth-, 10th, and 12th graders. From 1991 to 1994, lifetime use among eighth-graders (the youngest group surveyed) increased from 44 percent to 46.1 percent; occasional use, 14.3 percent to 18.6 percent; and daily use, 7.2 to 8.8 percent. Press reports latched on to these numbers in particular to proclaim a "surge," "huge jump," and "alarming rise" in cigarette use by children. That there has been a small increase in pre-teen smoking over the past four years is irrefutable. We should be worried, no question. But what the White House and media failed to emphasize, however, is that the survey only began monitoring eighth-graders and 10th-graders in 1991. Statistical trends for these groups are but a small subset of a larger data series that dates back to 1975. A look at the big picture, undistorted by selective statistical gerrymandering, shows promising downward trends. Over-all, daily smoking among high school seniors has been steadily declining. (Chart not shown in ASCII format) Moreover, heavy smoking by the nation's 12th-graders (a half-pack a day or more) plunger from 17.9 percent in 1975 to 11.2 percent in 1984, remaining flat for the past decade. Another astonishing phenomenon buried by the White House hoopla: the great decline in smoking by black teens. In 1980, 25.2 percent of black high school seniors smoked at least one cigarette over the past 30 days; by 1994, the figure had dropped to 11.0 percent -- no thanks to President Clinton, the Food and Drug Administration or the tobacco industry. Finally, the Michigan study offers data on a far more dramatic rise in recent years -- the increase in marijuana use by pre-teens and teens of both races and sexes. After dropping steadily for the past decades, occasional use among high school seniors spiked from 11.9 percent in 1992 to 19 percent in 1994; among all eighth-graders, use more than doubled, from 3.2 percent to 7.8 percent from 1991 to 1994. So should we expect an anti- marijuana initiative from our non-inhaling president anytime soon? Don't hold your breath. _______ ________ __________ / | | | |_______ | | | | \ _______ |_______ __________ COMPETITIVE ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE 1001 Connecticut Ave. NW #1250 Washington, DC 20036 202-331-1010, fax 202-331-0640 Permission to reprint must be obtained from the publishing journal listed above. Permission to copy granted as long as these lines are left intact. To subscribe to the cei list, send a message to CEI@digex.com. "The Virtual Hand: CEI's free-market guide to the information superhighway" is available for $5. CEI's monthly newsletter, "CEI UpDate," is free to contributors of $25.