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Teen smoking has been in steady decline from the peak levels reached in the mid-1990s, according to the U-M Monitoring the Future study released Dec. 19.

The study found that smoking rates fell by one-third to more than one-half among secondary school students, depending on grade level. Young people see smoking as more dangerous and are registering higher disapproval of smoking among peers at a time when the reported availability of cigarettes to younger students has declined.

But the rate of decline in youth smoking has decelerated during the past several years. In 2005 the decline halted among 8th graders, who have been the bellwethers of smoking trends among teens.

“We are still seeing some residual declines in smoking in the upper grades, as the lower-smoking birth cohorts make their way up the age spectrum,” says Lloyd Johnston, the study’s principal investigator. “But even in the upper grades a slowdown is occurring, and we believe the declines are likely to end very soon.”

The Monitoring the Future study surveys nationally representative samples of approximately 50,000 8th-, 10th- and 12th-grade students each year in about 400 secondary schools.

The study is supported through a series of investigator-initiated, competitive research grants made to the University by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). The authors of the forthcoming report on the 2005 findings are Johnston, Patrick O’Malley, Jerald Bachman and John Schulenberg—all psychologists and research professors at the Institute for Social Research.

Among high school seniors, rates of current smoking peaked in 1976, with nearly 40 percent of the graduating class saying that they had smoked one or more cigarettes during the prior 30 days. Smoking then declined among successive classes through the remainder of the 1970s to about 30 percent of the Class of 1980 saying they did so.

Then, for more than a decade the smoking rate among successive 12th-grade classes remained remarkably constant given that adult smoking rates declined during that historical period. But in the first half of the 1990s, teen smoking took off, increasing on the order of one-half by the mid-1990s among younger teens, and by about one-third among 12th graders.

Since those peaks were reached nine years ago, a number of things have happened, including a very visible discussion in the 1990s by White House officials, federal agencies and Congress on whether the tobacco industry actively was trying to hook kids.

It is likely that all of these factors contributed to the dramatic fall in teen smoking that has occurred since the mid-1990s, investigators say. Thirty-day smoking rates have fallen from their recent peaks in the mid-1990s by 56 percent, 51 percent and 37 percent among 8th, 10th and 12th graders, respectively.

“Although the recent decreases in smoking have more than offset the substantial rise in teen smoking during the early 1990s, the current rates still are far higher than parents and the public health community would like to see,” Johnston notes. “And considerable evidence is accumulating that the downturn in teen smoking may stall at about these still unacceptable levels.”

Smokeless Tobacco

The trends in use of this form of smokeless or “spit” tobacco—which includes both snuff and chewing tobacco—have been fairly parallel to those for cigarettes, with current use reaching a recent peak in the mid-1990s, followed by a substantial decline.

Eighth graders exhibited a decline of about one half in their past 30-day prevalence of smokeless tobacco use between 1994-2003, falling from 7.7 percent to 3.3 percent, where it remained in 2005.

Likewise, prevalence of use among 10th graders had fallen by half, from 10.5 percent in 1994 to 4.9 percent in 2004, before increasing slightly in 2005. Twelfth graders’ use fell by nearly half, from 12.2 percent in 1995 to 6.5 percent in 2002, before rising to 7.6 percent by 2005.