TEENAGE DRUG USE HIGHEST IN RURAL AREAS

WASHINGTON -- Adolescents in small-town and rural America are much
more likely than their peers in urban centers to have used drugs,
according to a private study released yesterday. The report urges the
government to reverse the alarming trend by funding the war on drugs
in non-metropolitan areas as well as it does in foreign countries such
as Colombia.

Eighth-graders in rural America are 104 percent likelier than those in
big cities to use amphetamines, including methamphetamines, and 50
percent likelier to use cocaine, according to the study released by
the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.

The study also found that eighth-graders in rural areas are 83 percent
more likely to use crack cocaine, and 34 percent more likely to smoke
marijuana than their urban counterparts.

"While people may erroneously associate drug abuse with urban
communities, drug abuse attacks our small cities and rural areas with
equal ferocity," said Barry McCaffrey, director of the White House
Office of National Drug Control Policy.

The figures, based primarily on 1999 data, were presented at the U.S.
Conference of Mayors winter meeting in Washington.

The threat of drugs to teens and children "is aggravated in small and
mid-size town, cities and counties that lack the resources and
experience available to large metropolitan concentrations to combat
this problem," said Joseph Califano Jr., president of the research
group.

Califano called on the Clinton administration and Congress to put
together an "emergency aid" package to fight drugs in rural America
that would match "dollar-for-dollar" the two-year, $1.6 billion aid
plan the Clinton administration proposed to Colombia.

McCaffrey countered that the administration had already increased
treatment funding by 26 percent over the past four years to $3 billion.

"The impact of these counter-drug efforts will be felt not just in
Bogota, Colombia, but in Boise, Idaho and Boston, Massachusetts,"
McCaffrey said.

The study also found that:

- - Eighth-graders in rural areas were 70 percent likelier to have
gotten drunk, and 29 percent likelier to drink alcohol.

- - Eighth-graders were more than twice as likely to smoke cigarettes,
and nearly five times more likely to use smokeless tobacco.

- - Among 10th-graders, use rates in rural areas exceeded those in large
urban areas for every drug except marijuana and the methamphetamine
known as ecstasy.

- - Among 12th-graders, use rates in rural America exceeded those in
large urban areas for cocaine, crack, amphetamines, inhalants,
alcohol, cigarettes and smokeless tobacco.

- - Adult drug use was about equal across communities of all
sizes.