YOUTH IN RURAL AREAS MORE LIKELY TO USE ILLEGAL DRUGS, STUDY SHOWS

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Illegal drug use among adolescents in small-town and
rural America is reaching alarming proportions, according to a private
study that urges the government to spend as much money fighting drugs in
nonmetropolitan areas as it does in Colombia and other foreign countries.

Eighth-graders in rural America are 104 percent likelier than those in
urban centers to use amphetamines, including methamphetamines, and 50
percent likelier to use cocaine, the study reported.

Eighth-graders in rural areas also are 83 percent likelier to use crack
cocaine, and 34 percent likelier to smoke marijuana than eighth-graders in
urban centers, according to the study.

"We've long heard the warning, and we're trying to reach beyond the cities
to the suburbs and rural areas to see the reach of drugs across America,"
Attorney General Janet Reno told the U.S. Conference of Mayors on
Wednesday. "We have to look at a radius beyond the cities."

The study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at
Columbia University was released Wednesday at the mayors' winter meeting
here. It was based primarily on 1999 data.

"Bluntly put, meth has come to Main Street, along with other drugs and with
magnum force aimed at our children," said Joseph A. Califano Jr., president
of the research group. "It's time for all Americans to recognize that drugs
are not only an urban problem."

To help counter the trend, Califano called on the Clinton administration
and Congress to adopt a $1.6 billion "emergency aid" package to fight drugs
in rural America.

On Tuesday, President Clinton proposed a two-year, $1.6 billion aid plan
for Colombia, in part to assist with anti-drug efforts there.

Clinton and Congress must match "dollar for dollar aid to Colombia with aid
to the rural communities," Califano said.

Califano's group used five different sets of data, from public and private
anti-drug groups, to come up with its results, and also studied data from
state and local law enforcement agencies.

Each set of data defined big cities and urban centers in different ways,
but in general, they classified rural areas as those with populations of
50,000 or less.

The study's results are frightening regardless of the way towns are
classified, said Susie Dugan, executive director of Parent Resources and
Information on Drug Education Inc. in Omaha, Neb.

"If the study's results are true, I'm not surprised," said Dugan, whose
group works in Omaha, a city of about 365,000 people, as well as outlying
rural areas. "Our kids today are thinking it's no big deal to use drugs."

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.

* Rural eighth-graders were more than twice as likely to smoke cigarettes,
and nearly five times likelier 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.