LOS ANGELES (MCT) — Nearly 30 percent of middle and high school boys and nearly 18 percent of girls used some form of tobacco last year, the federal government said in a report published Thursday.

Over the last decade, there has been a slow decline in tobacco use among middle and high school students, the report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. But when compared with other long-term studies, such as the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, the steep rate of decline from 1997 to 2003 has slowed noticeably.