TEEN DRUG USE STEADY FOR 4TH YEAR WASHINGTON--Teen-age drug use held steady in 2000, the fourth straight year it has either fallen or stayed the same, the federal government reported Thursday. Smoking dropped significantly but use of the club drug ecstasy climbed for the second year in a row. The annual survey, a study of teen drug, alcohol and tobacco use, had mostly good news, with drops among eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders. But it also found the number of high school seniors using heroin hit its highest point since the survey began in 1975, and more 10th-graders are using steroids. The survey of 45,000 students in 435 randomly chosen schools nationwide found that use of cocaine and hallucinogens, such as LSD dropped, with marijuana use unchanged from 1999. The results were released Thursday by Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala and Barry McCaffrey, White House drug policy director. "The national drug control strategy is working," McCaffrey said. Despite success in holding back increases, "we must remain vigilant to new threats, particularly that of so-called club drugs such as ecstasy," Shalala said. After increasing through the mid-1990s, teen drug use leveled off--and in some cases, dropped--in 1996. This year, usage was steady no matter how it was measured--in the last month, year or lifetime. The survey, which teens fill out anonymously, found that between 1997 and 2000: --For eighth-graders, use of any drug fell from 22.1 percent to 19.5 percent. --For 10th-graders, it fell from 38.5 percent to 36.4 percent. --For 12th-graders, it fell from 42.4 percent to 40.9 percent. The survey also looked at specific drugs and found that 36.5 percent of seniors had used marijuana in the past year. For 10th-graders, it was nearly as high--32.2 percent, and for eighth-graders, 15.6 percent. Those figures were all steady from 1999. Marijuana use peaked in 1979, when just over half of seniors used the substance. The low for marijuana use among 12th-graders was 1992, when just over one in five used it. Alcohol use remained widespread, though largely unchanged, with nearly three in four high school seniors drinking at least once in the past year. It was two in three for 10th-graders, and just over 40 percent for eighth-graders. A smaller but still significant chunk of teens reported binge drinking at least once in the two weeks before the survey. Thirty percent of 12th-graders, 26.2 percent of 10th-graders and 14.1 percent of eighth-graders said they had binged, defined as consuming five or more drinks in a row. Binge drinking peaked in 1981 at 41 percent and the low was 27.5 percent in 1993. Last year, 34.6 percent of seniors reported smoking in the past month, falling to 31.4 percent this year. The percentage of eighth-graders who used cigarettes in the past month fell from 17.5 percent last year to 14.6 percent. There were a few danger signs, including an increase in the use of MDMA, known as ecstasy, among eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders. Just over 8 percent of seniors said they had used ecstasy in the past year, up from 5.6 percent in 1999. And among high school seniors, the percentage of seniors who used heroin crept up from 1.1 percent last year to 1.5 percent this year--the first significant increase in a number of years. That's the highest percentage since the study began. The proportion of 10th-graders who used steroids rose from 1.7 percent to 2.2 percent, the study found. Use in the past year was reported by 2.2 percent of eighth-grade males, 3.6 percent of 10th-grade males and 2.5 percent of 12th-grade males. The survey also found: --The percentage of high school seniors who used cocaine in the past year fell from 6.2 percent to 5 percent. Past year use of crack fell from 2.7 percent to 2.2 percent, --Among seniors, past year use of hallucinogens dropped from 9.4 percent in 1999 to 8.1 percent this year. The study conducted by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research and financed by the National Institute on Drug Abuse has tracked illicit drug use among 12th-graders since 1975. In 1991, eighth- and 10th-graders were added to the study. On the Net: The text of the study can be found at http://www.drugabuse.gov.
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