61.   Smoking rates fell across age, race and gender lines.

62.   Smoking rates among Asian women remain relatively low, but cigarette makers are changing that with advertisements featuring slim Western women that link smoking to emancipation, Mackay said.

63.   Smoking rates had declined in the past but are now rising again, the Health Ministry warns in its latest report.

64.   The CDC said it expected teen smoking rates to drop -- just not by so much.

65.   The possibility is particularly alarming because blacks and teen-agers, who already have higher smoking rates overall, are more likely to prefer menthol cigarettes, researchers said.

66.   The study also found that the wide gap in smoking rates between white and black high school students does not exist among middle-schoolers.

67.   WHO Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland warned, however, that smoking rates remain much too high, especially among young people.

68.   With smoking rates declining in the West, transnational tobacco companies see Asia as their last growing market.

69.   The Western Pacific region has the highest smoking rate, with one in every three cigarettes produced being consumed in that region, the WHO said.