Tampa Bay Times from St. Petersburg, Florida • 14

14 A TIMFS SUNDAY. JULY 30. 1995 THE NATION r. Maimy tfeemis not simre wlhy tilhiey smoke NawYoriiTjnwt already, but I just can't do it," Bonnette said. "My nerves are bad.

It aggravated me. Smoking calms me down." Davis, who will be a sophomore at Brazoswood High, said she has never tried to quit, although a few times she ran out of cigarettes and had to go a day or two without them. "I got headaches really bad, and it was like I didn't want to do anything," the 15-year-old said of her time without tobacco. "I guess if I really wanted to, I think I could stop. Maybe when I get older or have kids or tin, 16, a young lady with a brown ponytail and hoop earrings who is entering her junior year at Brazos-wood High School here.

Babb, who recently dropped out of high school in nearby Lake Jackson, said, "Cigarettes are just the best after sex." When some of her girlfriends started laughing, she said, "No, I mean it, they really are. It's kind of like a ritual." Still, asked why they smoked the comments by the teenagers who smoke here raise a kind of chicken-or-the-egg question about the appeal of smoking. Virtually all of them scoffed at the idea that they had been swayed by advertising, instead insisting that they smoked because they were turned on to it by friends or by watching their parents smoke. "A lot of it is peer pressure, not advertising or anything," said Mar Carter. Said Grindele: "Most of my friends smoke Camels.

Now, why do we smoke Camels? I don't know. Half say they like the taste, half because they're cheap, and half because they think Joe Camel is cool." Many of the teenagers said they had no interest in trying to quit, but others said they had tried without success to kick the habit. "I tried particular brands, the youths were clearly familiar with marketing-based distinctions. Babb and her boyfriend, Elvis Carter, pointed to the side of their Marlboro package, which earned them 5 points (technically "frequent flyer" miles) toward the 2,285 they would need to send in for a free compact-disk player. "Let's see, at this rate, only about 400 more packs to go," said CLUTE, Texas Fifteen-year-old Amber Davis took a long drag on a Marlboro Light, rocking in a swing as the sun set, and she surveyed the bedlam of carnival fides and live rock music at the Great Texas Mosquito Festival, an Annual bash in this Gulf Coast refinery town.

"It's a social thing, I guess," (he freckle-faced Davis said of her smoking habit currently 10 ciga rettes or so a day. "And besides," she said, gesturing to the lighted Marlboro, I like to be a model. This burns off a lot of calories. i Amber's 16-year-old friend, xachel Martin, smokes off and on. f'lt mellows me out," she said, idling in the next swing.

"The first time I tried it, last year, I was like, I his is totally gross. I was cough ing, and I turned green, and I thought I was going to throw up. So had to learn to like it." With two major studies in re cent weeks suggesting that teenage smoking is on the rise throughout the country, the question of just how teenagers "learn to uke it is the subject of an increas ingly pitched debate in Congress. Many lawmakers are openly con templating new ways to restrict (tobacco or the estimated $5-billion a year that tobacco companies marketing their products, as they insist they do not seek to sell cigarettes to minors. But to many of the teenagers gathered on a hot Texas night at the Mosquito Festival in Clute, or Surfside, a beach town a few miles away, that controversy might ps well be taking place light years pway.

And many seem equally oblivious to the warnings from urn health experts. "I heard they have some cure for cancer now anyway, said Svl- via Babb, 17, who smokes a pack a itlay and had her first cigarette when she was 12. "They can just 6hrink it up and make it go away." She laughed and lit a Marlboro with the orange tip of her boyfriend's Joel n' Jerry's is dosing four stores in this area. The prescription files from these stores have been safely transferred to nearby Eckerd locations (see below). If you are a former customer of Joel Jerry's, we want to welcome you to the Eckerd family.

And remember, Eckerd won't be beat on prescription prices! Joel n' Jerry's location Rx Files Eckerd Store cigarette. Brian Grindele, a burly youth of 18 with a 1 -shirt advertising "Co-fed Naked Beer Games" and a par tiality to Camels, said that reports on the dangers of smoking must be exaggerated. transferred to "I figure if it's really so bad for you, they wouldn be selling them transferred to 3131 Fourth Street N. St Pete 23654 US 19 North Clearwater 11801 Seminole Blvd. Largo Northeast Shopping Center 294 37th Ave.

N. St Pete Phone: 896-3166 Sunset Point Shopping Center 23682 US 19 N. Clearwater Phone -799-0910 Largo Village Shopping Center 11902 Seminole Blvd. Largo Phone: 585-7436 transferred to transferred to 6145 18th Street North St Pete Rutland Plaza 1035 Ave. N.

St Pete everywhere, he said. I mean, you Walk into the Stop 'N' Go, and there's a whole wall of them right up front at the cash register. If they were really that bad for you, they'd make them less accessible." To be sure, there are plenty of youths here in Clute who do not smoke, including Grindele's friend, Derrick Petteway, who told him, you have to be some kind of jdiot to be putting that crap in your lungs." And Texas law prohibits the sale of cigarettes to anyone Under 18, although the law is routinely ignored and carries no penalties for the youths who buy cigarettes or smoke them in public. I But for those who do smoke, it js clear that there is no easy answer (o just why they started in the first place. "Hey, I smoke because I like to smoke," said Phillipp Bonnette, 8.

"This don't have anything to do with no Marlboro Man," he said, then puffed on a Marlboro. Even more to the point, talking to the youths makes it equally clear that there are no easy answers to getting them to stop. "The first thing they gotta realize, they can't make kids do anything," Babb explained. "Actually, if you tell them not to do it, they're going to do it. Kids rebel against things." Her best friend, Jackie Camp-pell, 18, who has been smoking since she was 12, said she could think of a way that would probably get more people to quit.

"Hike the price," she said. "Ii it was $4 a fack, I wouldn't smoke. Of course, don't want them to do that, but I think if they were serious about it, you'd get a lot of people saying, 'That's too much money for a Phone: 525-2184 The two former Joel n' Jerry's stores listed below are now the two newest Eckerd Drug Stores in the Tampa Bay area: 1 500 66th Street North St Pete 1 1 77 N. Missouri Avenue Largo Bring your Joel n1 Jerry's prescription container to any Eckerd for $10 Off your transferred prescription or use the coupon flcid coupon Expires 11 "TDDDDD Reg.Price Your transferred prescription If your prescription is less than $10, then it's FREE! Limit 1 coupon per customer. Transfer good from any pharmacy other than Eckerd.

Not valid on insurance co-payments. In South Carolina and Oklahoma, a doctor's approval may be required. Offer not valid in New Jersey and Oklahoma to persons under 62 years of age. Louisiana state law prohibits use of coupons for controlled substance prescriptions. Void where prohibited by law.

Coupon good at any Eckerd pharmacy. Coupon must accompany purchase. I mm tmrnwrn mm mm i i i I i a i i $moke, so forget it. I A tracking study of 50,000 teenagers, released earlier this tnonth by the University of Michi- Survey Research Center, ound a sharp increase in smoking among the young even as it was tailing among adults, Among eighth-graders, for instance, who are typically 13 or 14, the survey showed that 18.6 percent of the youths had smoked in the previous 30 days, an increase of 30 percent compared with the rate three years ago. Almost 9 percent Of the eighth-graders surveyed said they smoked daily, up from 7.2 percent in 1991.

i Among lOth-graders, 25.4 percent said they had smoked in the past month, up 20 percent from 1991, and the rate of daily smoking kad increased from 12.6 percent to 14.6 percent. But the survey could not pinpoint the cause of the increase. And.