GROUP WARNS ABOUT 'CREEPING LEGALIZATION' OF DRUGS

DURHAM -- "More Doctors Smoke Camels."

This cigarette ad and others like it were once common in this
country. Duffy's Pure Malt Whiskey was marketed as a health
supplement for nursing mothers, and cigars supposedly cured asthma
and bronchitis.

Misinformation about addictive drugs is nothing new.

And that ignorance is resurfacing in today's debate over legalizing
marijuana, said Sue Rusche, executive director of National Families
in Action.

Rusche is co-founder of the Atlanta-based organization, which has
helped parents form 3,000 drug-prevention groups across the country.

"I think we're seeing creeping legalization, and most people don't
really understand that," Rusche said at a seminar at N.C. Central
University's Biomedical/Biotechnology Research Institute Wednesday.

It's important for people to realize how society was once influenced
with the wrong information "because we're doomed to repeat history if
they don't," she said.

Drug use rose to its highest levels in the early 1960s and peaked in
1979, according to Monitoring the Future, an annual survey paid for
by the Department of Health and Human Services, Rusche said.

In the 1970s, some Western states were decriminalizing drugs like
cocaine, heroin and marijuana, and the drinking age was lowered to 18.

"The Vietnamese War and social protests of the '60s got it going," she said.

Then groups like the National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Law (NORML) began advocating for the decriminalization of
drugs. Most people thought that because state legislators were
approving these measures that they must be acceptable, Rusche said.

Drug kits teaching children how to roll joints and smoke crack
cocaine were sold in head shops in almost every state.

" 'Head' is a term drug users formed," she said. "A head is somebody
that uses drugs and alters his mind. The conversation was taking
place all over the country, so the drug use escalated across the
board."

But once Rusche discovered her neighbor's children were addicted to
alcohol and PCP (phencyclidine), she knew something had to be done.

"Our children were 7 and 8," she said. "A group a little older,
around 10 and 11, got very heavily involved in drugs, and nobody
thought that could happen."

If somebody didn't do something soon, the country's drug problem
would only get worse, Rusche said. So NFIA was formed, and the group
immediately began working with Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD)
to get the drinking age back up to 21.

"There were these great grass-roots programs across the states," she said.

NFIA also succeeded in closing head shops.

"What we did was, NFIA got the first laws outlawing paraphernalia
sales," Rusche said. "Then we helped other cities get similar laws
passed. We helped them politically stop other efforts to
decriminalize marijuana."

From 1979 to 1992, regular drug use among adolescents and young
adults dropped by two-thirds, and daily marijuana use among high
school seniors went from 10.8 percent to 1.9 percent, she said,
according to studies conducted by Monitoring the Future and the
National Household Survey.

But Rusche doesn't believe this was all the result of her organization.

"It was the government agencies responding and Congress responding to
the outrage parents felt all over the country," she said.

Now those numbers are increasing again because people are being made
to believe that drugs are OK.

"My theory is it's the push to legalize drugs . and the idea that
kids can use drugs safely," she said.

Now illicit drugs are being considered for medicinal purposes again,
Rusche said, and it presents a tricky problem.

"One component of marijuana has been synthesized -- Marinol -- which
is used to treat cancer patients," she said. "[But] marijuana plant
material has not been legalized or deemed as safe."

Byron Brooks, mental health counselor for NCCU, said Americans see
how society is progressing technologically and foolishly believe the
old mindset of the past won't return. But he said legalizing drugs
would be dangerous.

"I believe you would ultimately end up increasing the access to the
drugs," he said. "Back in the 1800s people didn't know they were as
addictive as they were. They didn't have the whole spectrum of
addiction."

Sophomore Tamyka Forrester, 19, exercise science major, said she was
surprised to see how little people actually knew about drugs back
then.

"The drugs a couple hundred years ago were common, like the
advertisement for the happy cigar. people really didn't know the bad
effects of it," she said.

Opium, alcohol, cannabis and heroin were all used for medicinal
purposes and advertised as safe products.

"People had no idea what they were taking, and addiction began to
spread out throughout the country," Rusche said.

Now the country is still feeling the effects of that addiction today.

"We know a lot more than we did then, but the public has kind of
forgotten the lessons of the '80s," she said. "The public has gotten
tired of the problem."