STILL REASON FOR CONCERN AT LEVEL OF TEEN DRUG USE

Have you had that substance abuse chat with your teen-age child yet?
(Actually, if you've waited until he or she was a teen, you might have
waited too long ...)

Nonetheless, it's an important conversation -- one that seems to have had
some positive results in the past decade.

The good news, for example, is that teen smoking continues to decline. The
data are contained in an annual survey conducted by the University of
Michigan's Institute for Social Research and financed by the National
Institute on Drug Abuse.

Last year, 34.6 percent of high school seniors reported smoking in the past
month -- a figure down to 31.4 percent this year. At the eighth-grade
level, the number was 17.5 percent last year and 14.6 percent this year.

The survey anonymously queries 45,000 students in 435 randomly chosen
schools nationwide.

Overall drug use among teens leveled off in the mid-'90s and has mostly
stayed there. For example:

For 12th-graders, use of any drug in the past year fell from 42.4 percent
in 1999 to 40.9 percent in 2000.

For 10th-graders, use of any drug slid from 38.5 percent to 36.4 percent.

For eighth-graders, the number slid from 22.1 percent to 19.5 percent.

According to the survey, 36.5 percent of high school seniors had used
marijuana in the past year. In 1979, that number was above 50 percent. But
it had slipped to about 20 percent in 1992 before rebounding.

Alcohol use remains high -- too high, as a matter of fact. Three in four
high school seniors report drinking at least once in the past year. That
number is two-in-three for sophomores and more than 40 percent of
eighth-graders!

Bad news: The drug "ecstasy," a party favorite, showed increased use among
teens for the second straight year.

Even though most of the numbers are leveling off or dropping, they are
still alarming. Adults need to have rational conversations with their
children, show they care -- and then, practice what they preach. "Do as I
say, not as I do,'' doesn't impress teens.