Not to be outdone, President Clinton has come out with new Food and Drug Administration regulations declaring nicotine an addictive drug. The regulations will severely limit cigarette advertising in any place where it can be seen by minors, ban cigarette brand-name sponsorship of sporting events and the use of brand names on T-shirts, and require photo ID with proof of age for cigarette sales to anyone under age 27. That's right, 27.
The new drug statistics are, of course, bad news, though it is worth noting that 90 percent of the teenagers surveyed had not used illicit drugs in the past month and that the rise is mainly in marijuana use. (For all the alarmism about marijuana as a ``gateway'' drug, the number of hard-drug users consistently stays at a fraction of the number of pot smokers, suggesting that very few of the latter move on to the really nasty stuff.)
And blaming Clinton is silly. First, the upward trend started in 1992, before he became President. Second, the same trends are evident in Canada and Western Europe. Third, the idea that kids who use drugs are influenced by something the President does or doesn't do is dubious, to say the least. Fourth, teenage smoking also has increased - on the watch of the most outspokenly antitobacco administration in history.
The reasons for these trends are complex. They may even include the fact that, after being bombarded with warnings about the deadly perils of even occasional drug use, and seeing that people who have experimented with drugs are all right, many kids have grown cynical.
On the other side, we have the equally dubious idea that kids smoke because of Joe Camel.
