Blowing Smoke at the Prez : Health: It won’t work, teen-agers say of Clinton’s plan to tighten restrictions on cigarettes.

Teen cigarette smokers have one word for President Clinton’s proposal to curb their habit:

Not.

The Prez, they say, is clueless. Stop smoking? Right. And why not tear up their precious driver’s licenses too?

Next thing you know, the guy will propose mandatory early bedtime for America’s youth. Get real. Teen-agers are as likely to snuff their cigarettes as they are to trade their video games for volumes of Chaucer or stop hanging out at malls.

“We’re going to smoke anyway,” said Liz Lopez, 17, voicing the defiant mantra of her generation. “Teen-agers can get anything if they want to.”

If Clinton succeeds in his efforts to tighten existing restrictions on cigarettes, Lopez and other ordinarily law-abiding youths in the San Fernando Valley and elsewhere vowed--what else?--rebellion.

“It doesn’t really matter,” said Jamie, 17, as she took a drag at a Ventura Boulevard Starbuck’s. “People are still going to get them.”

Under Clinton’s plan, smokers would be required to provide photo identification with proof of age before purchasing a pack of cigarettes. Vending machines would be prohibited from places where youths gather. Billboards displaying cigarette ads would be banned from sites within 1,000 feet of schools and playgrounds.

With such measures, Clinton hopes to battle the rise of cigarette smoking among teen-agers. According to a recent federal study, the increase is particularly pronounced among eighth-graders. In that age group, regular or occasional smoking has jumped to 19%.

Seventeen-year-old Heather--she didn’t want to give her last name--was miffed at the government’s proposed intrusion into her personal habits.

“I’m almost 18,” she said indignantly between puffs on a cigarette at an Encino coffee stand. “It’s no big deal.”

At Canoga Park Bowl, Nancy Khanlian was outraged by Clinton’s proposal.

“Everybody is an individual, you know,” said Nancy, a 15-year-old junior at Chatsworth High School. “You should be able to do what you want to. It isn’t like drinking and driving; you can’t really do harm to anybody with cigarettes except yourself.”

Her brother Gabriel, a former smoker who now urges friends to quit, said Clinton’s heart is in the right place, but his plan is misguided.

“Make it legal for kids to smoke,” the 18-year-old Pierce College freshman said. “That’s what will stop it. That’s how kids’ brains work.”

Dee Johnson of Panorama City figures his fellow teen-agers will find a way around any tougher law. “It’s not going to stop them,” said the 18-year-old as he sat at a video game in a Sherman Oaks arcade.

“They get people to buy liquor for them. Why not get people to buy cigarettes?”

John Choi of Glendale speculated that rigid restrictions would spur a huge black market at high schools.

Choi, 18, started smoking when he was 10. His older sister’s friends taught him because they thought it was “cute.”

Now, he’s a die-hard smoker. He got a free Marlboro-logo sweater from the tobacco company after he sent in 70 empty packs--a feat he accomplished in one month of smoking, he said.

Maybe one day, he’ll quit. But not because of Clinton or anyone else, says Choi, who will be a pre-med student at UC Irvine this fall. Laughing at the disparity between his professional ambitions and his own addiction to a substance known to cause lung cancer, Choi said: “I gotta quit, man.”

Princess Santos, a 13-year-old who will enter eighth grade this fall, says she has been smoking for two years. She purchases her cigarettes at liquor stores and gas stations.

On occasion, when a clerk balks at selling cigarettes to her, she reminds him that plenty of other stores will. Usually, she walks away with pack in hand.

“I regret smoking but now that I’m doing it, I need it,” she sighed as she cruised the Glendale Galleria. “Especially after I eat.”

Not everyone favored defiance. Many nonsmoking youths applauded the news that access to tobacco might soon become more difficult.

“It’ll stop a lot of cancer,” Jovon Williams, a 15-year-old Chatsworth High School junior and varsity football player, said of Clinton’s plan.

“It’s ruining a lot of people’s lives,” said teammate Vince Hernandez, 15. “Especially if you play sports. You hurt your lungs, you get tired real quick and ruin your life just for a cigarette.”

Even some smokers agreed.

“If I hadn’t started when I did, I’d be better off,” said Doug Shapses of Pacific Palisades. The 17-year-old said he has smoked for several years. But now, when he plays football and basketball, he loses his breath.

Minutes after taking a drag on a Marlboro Red in Arleta’s Branford Park, 17-year-old Marlon Hernandez spoke approvingly of Clinton’s program.

Hernandez started smoking last month because of peer pressure, he said, and is already up to five cigarettes a day. He figures a federal crackdown is just what he needs to kick the habit.

“They take those things away from me,” he said, “and I’ll quit.”

Alfredo Toscano, an 18-year-old Angeleno, recently kicked his habit.

“I wasn’t smoking because I liked it, I was smoking because everyone else was doing it, because it was cool,” he said. “People used to tell me that smokers die young. I don’t want to die young.”

Times staff writers Jeff Leeds, Ian James and Peter Hong and correspondent Mary Moore contributed to this story.