Teen Smoking: `Maybe It's Just A White Thing'

WASHINGTON - Recently, I was out with my son, 13, when we saw one of his middle-school classmates, a slightly gawky blonde who waved merrily at us as she passed.

"She's cute," I whispered.

Mani shrugged, put two fingers to his lips and pretended to draw on an invisible cigarette.

"She smokes?" I blurted. He nodded, explaining that mutual friends had occasionally spied her sharing a cigarette with pals after school. Asked why he thought she did it, he again shrugged.

"They think smoking's cool," he said.

Thanks to a recent University of Michigan study, I knew whom he meant by "they": the surprisingly high number of young smokers who - like my son's cute classmate - are white. Although the percentage of black teenage cigarette smokers has plummeted - last year, only 5 percent of black U.S. high-school seniors reported smoking daily - some 23 percent of white seniors smoke daily, according to the survey. And a 1994 survey, also by the University of Michigan, suggests that black teenagers are at least 20 percent less likely to use cocaine or marijuana than their white or Latino peers.

I for one am fascinated when black kids - disparaged and stereotyped in so many ways - are revealed to be doing the safe, smart thing. Racial disparities in cigarette use can't be explained away by disposable income, dropout rates, religiousness or parents' education, researchers say.

And I for one wonder: Why would so large a percentage of white

youngsters smoke, when the addiction's detrimental effects have never been better known? Parents - including President Clinton, who has announced his intention to reduce youthful smoking by limiting cigarette marketing to kids - would love to know.

Theories abound. Some cite the many sexy, white stars - Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Drew Barrymore and an array of rockers - who've been photographed smoking cigarettes. Others say some black teens' fascination with sports discourages smoking - though white teens are sports-minded, too.

Clearly, different communities have different notions of what's cool. For some reason, smoking's cool quotient has dropped among African Americans.

During a recent lunchtime visit to Silver Spring, Md., Montgomery Blair High School, one of suburban Washington's most multicultural schools, I surveyed a throng of baggy-shirted teens of every shade. Quickly I found a smoker - a tall, blond youth laughing with four friends, one of them black, as he puffed a Newport.

Joe, 16 - who like the others asked that his last name not be used - is a junior who says his mom knows about his two-year habit, but whose dad is unaware because "he's just never around."

Joe started smoking because "a lot of my friends did," he said. Though he'd like to stop - and ceased smoking for six days once - he hasn't been able to quit. The problem: "All my friends would still smoke."

Friends such as "Droop," 16, a pale brunette who says he started smoking because he enjoyed the nicotine "buzz," or slight high. Today, the buzz is gone and smoking is "just a habit. . . . I could stop, but I see no reason to."

"Except that you'll die - with some pain," interjected his friend, Jake, a nonsmoker who's also white. Droop shrugged.

The black youth, A.J., 18, doesn't smoke because he's an athlete and because "it's a bad habit. . . . Plus, my mom would throw me out of the house."

The 34 students in teacher John Mathwin's newspaper journalism class, ages 15 to 17, all said they're nonsmokers. White student Carolyn Harris, 15, said smoking among black students is so rare, "I really notice it."

Jessica Skolnik, 16, attended a summer drama camp where, "a lot of the other white girls smoked, even singers. . . . They associated smoking with glamour. One carried a huge cigarette holder and told me, `I look like a star from the '40s.' "

Rehana Mwalimu, 16, a Zambia-born black student, says cigarette smoking at Blair is so linked to whites that "if a black person does smoke, other blacks ask, `Why are you smoking that white-boy stuff?' "

While Erica Levi feels whites' smoking "has a lot to do with group role models . . . the Johnny Depp versus Will Smith thing," Jeanne Arnold thinks the habit can be traced "to who you hang out with. . . . Maybe smoking is just a white thing."

But maybe it goes deeper. Cecily Iddings, a white senior, said: "Black males as a group have more day-to-day dangers. Maybe if you're white, and don't have that kind of threat, it's easier to mess up your body."

Added Anya Sostek, 16, also white:

"For teens, smoking is about rebellion. It's a way to be bad. . . . If you're black, you're already stereotyped as bad, so you don't need to rebel."

(Copyright, 1995, Washington Post Writers Group)

Donna Britt's column appears Thursday on editorial pages of The Times.