TEEN DRUG USE HOLDS STEADY IN Y2K

WASHINGTON (AP) - Illicit drug use among teen-agers held steady in 2000 for
the fourth straight year, and cigarette smoking declined significantly, the
government reported Thursday.

The annual Monitoring the Future survey, a benchmark for teen drug, alcohol
and tobacco use, had mostly good news, with drops among eighth-, 10th- and
12th-graders. But it also found use of the drug ecstasy, a favorite at
dance clubs, increasing for the second year running. And the number of high
school seniors using heroin hit its highest point since the survey began in
1975.

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 being released by Health and Human Services (news - web
sites) Secretary Donna Shalala and Barry McCaffrey, White House drug policy
director.

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 ever.

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.

With intense focus on smoking in the last few years, cigarette use dropped
significantly.

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 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.