Despite the Healthy People 2010 initiative's goal of reducing teen tobacco use during the preceding month to 21 percent or less, the rate of tobacco use among young people has remained largely unchanged in the past two years, according to the 2004 National Youth Tobacco Survey.
The biannual survey, conducted in 2004 by the CDC and published in the April 1 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, found nearly 11.7 percent of middle-school students and 28 percent of high-school students reported using some type of tobacco product. Cigarettes remained the product of choice, reportedly used by 8.1 percent of middle-school students and 22.3 percent of high-school students.
In 2002, 13.3 percent of middle-school students used tobacco products, and 9.8 percent reported using cigarettes, while 28.2 percent of high-school students reported tobacco use, and 22.5 percent reported smoking cigarettes.
The plateau in reducing youth tobacco use likely stems from several causes, including lax enforcement of restrictions on tobacco purchases. Nearly 71 percent of middle-school youth and nearly 64 percent of high-school youth younger than 18 said they were not asked to show proof of age when they attempted to buy cigarettes from a store; 66.4 percent of middle-school students and 62.1 percent of high-school students were not refused purchase of cigarettes because of their age.
Meanwhile, funding for comprehensive statewide tobacco-prevention and -control programs "declined substantially," from $749.7 million in fiscal year 2002 to $542.6 million in FY 2004.Tobacco industry expenditures for promotion more than doubled between 1997 and 2002, the CDC said.
