Unfortunately, high school students are also jumping on the bandwagon.

Cigars, vastly becoming popular in the United States, are just as deadly, if not more so, than cigarettes. Yet they do not have warning labels as cigarettes and smokeless tobacco have. Why not?

Government health officials are now asking themselves the same question and are finally considering making cigar makers put warning labels on their products. This a good and worthwhile idea.

There is no compelling reason why cigars should not have warning labels on them; the fact is, according to the National Cancer Institute, they can contain up to 90 times as much toxins and carcinogens as cigarettes.

The government forces warnings to be placed on cigarettes, smokeless tobacco and other harmful substances, and labels should be placed on cigars as well, for the same reasons they are placed on other harmful products.

While the focus should remain on educating young people -- as well as adults -- on the dangers of smoking cigars, omitting labels from cigars is only going to lead young people to believe that cigars do not carry the same health risks. And that is definitely the wrong message to send to teen-agers.

Cigars, long seen as the "glamorous" way to smoke, are catching on with different age groups -- age groups looking up to adults seen as rich and educated with cigars in their mouths.

Without anyone to warn them -- or warning labels that might deter them -- high school students are beginning to see cigars as the "cool thing to do."

Teen-agers should be the people whom we warn about even starting the habit of cigar smoking in the first place. Labels may only deter some people from smoking them, but if they are at least warned before doing it, they might think twice about it.