Teen smoking rate continues up by Barnaby J. Feder New York Times   David Bernt, a 17-year-old high school junior in the affluent Chicago suburb of Oak Park, was one of the few who smoked in junior high school. ``But now, if you go by there, it seems to be everywhere,'' he said. Researchers calculate that teenage smoking rates, after declining in the 1970s and leveling off in the 1980s, have climbed sharply over the past five years. Although reasons for the trend are disputed, it adds up to a huge health problem for the country and a public-relations disaster for the tobacco industry. The figures have played a crucial role in driving the once-intractable industry into negotiations for a global settlement with regulators and legal adversaries. The negotiations are expected to resume today. Teenage smoking rates are still lower than in the 1970s. But the percentage of 12th-graders who smoked daily last year jumped 20 percent since 1991, to 22 percent, according to the most recent edition of the University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future Survey, an annual study widely followed by tobacco researchers. The rate among 10th-graders jumped 45 percent, to 18.3 percent, and the rate for eighth-graders is up 44 percent, to 10.4 percent. Five million people now younger than 18 will eventually die of tobacco-related illnesses at current smoking rates, according to the most recent projections from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. If youth smoking rates had continued downward to the lowest levels achieved by any segment of the teenage population in recent years -- those for black teenagers in the early 1990s -- fewer than 1 million of today's youth would be likely to die prematurely of tobacco-related illness, said Terry Pechacek, an epidemiologist in the Office on Smoking and Health at the disease-control agency. Rising youth smoking rates have been cited by the Food and Drug Administration and President Clinton as evidence the tobacco industry is marketing its products to youth and should be restricted by the FDA. The statistics also are fueling demands in many states and nationally for higher taxes on tobacco, based on research showing price increases typically discourage teenage smokers. And lawyers in both private class actions on behalf of adult smokers and in many of the 23 state lawsuits seeking compensation for Medicaid spending on tobacco-related illnesses have demanded restrictions on sales as well as financial compensation. ``A lot of this wouldn't be happening if youth smoking rates had been declining,'' said William Novelli, director of the National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids in Washington. What has caused the rise in teen smoking is hotly debated. The tobacco industry says the increase is due to a broad range of social forces. Industry officials say other kinds of risk-taking like marijuana and drug use are up, too. And they cite teenagers' naturally rebellious reaction to the increasing efforts to stop them from smoking. Critics of the tobacco industry agree that rebelliousness and other forces are at work. But they say the industry itself is the most important factor. The industry's spending on domestic advertising and promotions soared from $361 million in 1970 to $4.83 billion in 1994, the last year for which the Federal Trade Commission has published data. John Pierce, head of the Cancer Prevention Center at the University of California-San Diego, said advertising spending rose most rapidly in the 1980s, when the smoking rate started to rise, too. Critics also point to research showing that children have been strongly attracted to some of the biggest marketing campaigns, notably R.J. Reynolds' efforts to promote the ever-hip Joe Camel and Philip Morris' use of the rugged Marlboro man.