American youth are shying away from risky health behaviors like smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol or having indiscriminate sex, according to a new study released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However the report says that despite an overall decrease in health risk behaviors among high school students since 1991, racial and ethnic differences are still on the higher side. The Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance – United States, 2005, report was released in a special issue of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. ‘We’re delighted that we’re seeing some progress, but the reality is that risk-behavior levels are just way too high,’ said Howell Wechsler, director of the division of adolescent and school health at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ‘We want to celebrate that most of the risk behaviors are going in right direction, but they’re not going down fast enough so we have a lot more work to do.’ The survey to measure the prevalence of risky behavior has been conducted every two years since 1991. The current data was collected in the spring of 2005 from almost 14,000 students in public and private high schools around the country. […]