More U.S. Teen-Agers Smoking, Survey Shows

More U.S. teen-agers are taking up smoking after a 15-year decline, while the number of American adults starting to smoke has dropped to nearly zero, a researcher reported Thursday in Oakland.

“The adults have dropped it like a stone,” said John Pierce of UC San Diego, whose conclusions were based on national surveys of 100,000 people and on California surveys of 8,000.

Among teen-agers, smoking began to rise in 1988 after declining by about 1 percentage point per year through the 1980s, Pierce reported at the first scientific conference of the California Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program. The study confirms earlier surveys that show smoking rates increasing among white teen-agers. Smoking is believed to be declining significantly among black teen-agers.

Pierce and Donald Shopland, coordinator of the smoking control program at the National Cancer Institute, blamed the turnaround on RJR Nabisco’s widely criticized Joe Camel advertising campaign, built around a suave cartoon character.

The company has vigorously denied such charges, saying that the campaign is intended only to encourage smokers to switch brands.

The most recent data shows that about 6% of teen-agers ages 16 to 18 in California were smokers in 1988. By 1990, that had climbed to almost 8%, Pierce said.