Tobacco Documents Online

a-17e was~i~~ooic (Tanes TUESDAY, AUGUST 22, 1995 * P_ A!~ Letters If we want to curb teen age smoking, here's what to do In declaring war on the jerry- built "pediatric disease" of teen smoking, President Clinton is using children as fodder to justify gov- ernment intrusion and regulation in the private lives of Americans. (See Mona Charen's Aug. 16 col- umn, "Fbr every problem a federal solutionY') The issue is not whether teen smoking should be illegaL It already is. No parent wants his or her child to start smoking. The real issue is whether the federal government can effectively address what is essentially a matter of individual behavior and family and personal responsibility. The president is blowing smoke if he thinks faceless bureaucrats sitting in Washington will have more influence over teen-agers than the adults with whom they interact on a day-to-day basis. As a former high school math teacher, I can tell you that peer pres- sure is by far the tnost salient factor in a teen-ager's decision to start smoking. drinking, cutting classes or engaging in other forms of behav- ior that we adults deem irresponsi- ble. The statistics bear this out. Last yeac: the smoking rate among white teen-agers was 23 percent, com- pared to 5 percent among black teen- agers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Should vye then infer that black teen- agers are less susceptible to adver- tising allegedly targeting children than white eeen-agers27 Of course not The disparity is due to the absence of peer pressure among black teen- agers to smoke, which is, in turn, reinforced by community values. A top-down presidential edict is heavy-handed, misguided and like- ly to feed teen-agers' cynicism about politicians and the political process. A far more effective strategy to dis- courage teen smoking would be to enhance the authority of parents, teachers, cc+mmunities - the whole village-to address the anxiety and alienation of a generation that's stressed out due to the collapse of the two-parent family and the grow- ing absence of parental and adult supervision and who are bored out of their gourd, jammed into 19th- century, industrial-age schools as the rest of society heads toward the 21st century. \dILTON BINS Washington