[Brittany] Stauffer, a freshman at Virginia Commonwealth University, said that even though she's a smoker and plans to quit once she's out of college, she agrees with President Clinton's efforts to give the Food and Drug Administration increased power to regulate tobacco. "It's a bad habit," she said. "I kind of wish I didn't do it."

But Stauffer also doesn't think regulation aimed at reducing teen-age smoking will work. Advertisements "are not on TV," she said. "You occasionally see them in magazines and they're real corny ads. Smoking is just in your face so much because so many people smoke."

Even if regulators curtailed tobacco advertising and banned cigarette vending machines, government action alone won't cause teen-agers to quit smoking, those interviewed yesterday said.