Results of this survey are scheduled to be announced at a news conference in Washington, D.C., at the Department of Health and Human Services Hubert H. Humphrey Building. Participating in the release of results will be Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna E. Shalala, Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy Barry R. McCaffrey, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse Alan I. Leshner, and the principal investigator of the Monitoring the Future study, Lloyd D. Johnston. That's why it's so important for teen-agers not to become smokers in the first place.
Cigarette smoking is the leading preventable cause of death and disease in the United States.
The rate rose to 21.0 percent by 1996, but then began falling back, reaching 14.6 percent in 2000, including a 2.8 percentage point decline between 1999 and 2000. Among 10th-graders, the rate of current smoking was 20.8 percent in 1991, rose to 30.4 percent in 1996, and then fell steadily back to 23.9 percent by 2000. Monitoring the Future is conducted at the U-M Institute for Social Research. This year's survey results are based on nationally representative samples of 8th, 10th, and 12th grade students attending public and private schools in the coterminous United States. The study finds smoking rates among African American adolescents to be considerably lower than among their White and Hispanic counterparts.