· Each day, 3,000 teens smoke their first cigarette. That's more than one million annually. Approximately one-third of these children smokers will eventually die of smoking-related illnesses.

· At least 4 million adolescents are current smokers.

· Smoking is a pediatric disease. The average teenage smoker starts smoking at age 12.5 and becomes a daily smoker by age 18.

· According to a 1997 national survey of high school students, the overall prevalence of current cigarette use and frequent cigarette use were 36.4 percent and 16.7 percent, respectively.

· A 1997 survey reported that current cigar use among high school students was 22 percent.

· In 1996, an estimated six million 14-19 year-olds (26.7 percent of people in this age group) reported having smoked a cigar in the previous year. Of these, cigarette smokers as well as users of smokeless tobacco were more than three times as likely as non-tobacco users to report having smoked a cigar in the previous year.

· People who begin smoking at an early age a

Younger smokers are more likely than older smokers to quit smoking or reduce the amount they smoke as a result of price increases.

· In August 1996, the Food and Drug Administration issued regulations to limit the accessibility and appeal of tobacco products to young people. The regulations include the following:

Tobacco excise taxes are a reliable source of income

Low tobacco taxes have resulted in a financial bonanza for the tobacco industry, which has taken advantage of declining tax rates to boost profits on cigarettes. Total industry profits have skyrocketed from $2.7 billion in 1981 to $6.7 billion in 1984.

When California raised its cigarette tax from 10 cents to 35 cents per pack on January 1, 1989, revenue jumped from $252 million in FY 1988 to $778 million in FY 1990. From 1990 to 1996, per capita cigarette sales in California declined 15.8%.

Based on the tobacco industry's logic, all efforts to combat cancer, heart disease, AIDS and other diseases should cease, because having people die earlier saves money.

Smokers with family incomes equal to or below the family median income were more likely to respond to price increases by quitting than smokers with family incomes above the income median.

An increase in cigarette taxes is a "user fee" that helps recapture some of the staggering costs smokers impose on the public.

On average, each cigarette pack sold costs Americans more than $4.05 in smoking-related expenses.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) a tax increase of 50 percent would cause a 12.5% reduction in total U.S. cigarette consumption -- or approximately 60 billion fewer cigarettes smoked per year.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, health care expenditures, caused directly by smoking, totaled $50 billion in 1993. Forty-three percent of these costs were paid by government funds, including Medicaid and Medicare.

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