Smoking, we are told, has reached a crisis level with America's teen-agers. In response, government has mobilized its forces to educate teens about the horrors of smoking, punish tobacco companies for exploiting the nation's youth and reassure parents who feel helpless in their crusade to keep their kids away from the devil weed.
But there is a more urgent and widespread threat to young people that hasn't drawn a fraction of the attention cigarettes have: the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).
Last March, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said sexual diseases such as chlamydia are epidemic in the United States. A new study released this week found that more than one-fourth of sexually active inner-city girls were infected with chlamydia, a disease that usually has no symptoms but often causes infertility.
Chlamydia is a bacterial disease that is the nation's most commonly reported infection, with 4 million new cases a year and a cost estimated at $2.4 billion. Sexually active adolescent girls have the highest risk of contracting it. Indeed, the study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 14-year-old girls had the highest infection rate -- 27.5 percent.
As the study is quick to point out, this disease cuts across racial lines. Black adolescents and white adolescents have high rates of chlamydia.
Overall, some 12 million Americans, two-thirds of them under 25, acquire new STDs each year. That's 12 times as many as start smoking. Five of the 10 most frequently reported infectious diseases in America are STDs.
What's frustrating is that many of these STDs, including chlamydia, are preventable through the use of condoms or, better yet, through abstinence. Unfortunately, ignorance prevails.
If STDs are more widespread among teens than cigarettes, why has the Clinton administration and its allies not led the charge to educate the public and moralize like they have on smoking?
The effects of smoking usually aren't realized until years after the habit begins. But an STD that goes untreated can cause cancer in women and scar the uterus, causing fertility problems. Nevertheless, smoking is treated like a sin while promiscuity and its consequences are hushed up.
It may be the new morality, but it results in the same age-old problems.
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