NIXON-ERA PROGRAM ON TEEN DRUG USE GOING STRONG

Project That Asks Kids About Habits 'Unparalleled in Its Importance'

HAMBURG TOWNSHIP, Mich. -- President Nixon may not have dented the
nation's drug epidemic when he named Elvis Presley a "federal agent
at large" in the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs in 1970. But
a $120 million research program born in the Nixon administration
continues to shape America's drug policies.

It all started with a 33-year-old psychology graduate student's plan
to poll thousands of teens nationwide each year about their drug
habits and beliefs.

Lloyd Johnston, now 67, still runs that study from the University of
Michigan's Institute for Social Research. His group recently won a
$33 million National Institute on Drug Abuse grant to continue through 2012.

"It's just unparalleled in its importance in our field," said Tom
Hendrick, founding director of the Partnership for a Drug-Free
America. The group launched the iconic TV ads showing a frying egg
and a narrator who says, "This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?"

The study owes its birth to Nixon drug czar Robert DuPont, who read
Johnston's 1973 book Drugs and American Youth and invited the
research assistant to brief his staff. Johnston pitched DuPont the
idea he and colleague Jerald Bachman dreamed up of asking teens
across the country about their drug, alcohol and tobacco habits and
attitudes. "I said, 'We've got to do this, and Lloyd is the guy to do
it,' " said DuPont, a psychiatrist and head of the Institute for
Behavior and Health in Rockville, Md.

The project was approved in August 1974. The first "Monitoring the
Future" surveys were conducted the following spring.

Released in late 1975, the results gave the nation a first
comprehensive look at what its children were smoking, popping and
drinking: 40% of high school seniors said they had used marijuana in
the past 12 months, and 45% had taken an illicit drug in that time.

From the start, the annual studies drew intense media coverage, Johnston said.

"NBC put on a one-hour special called, 'Reading, Writing and Reefer,'
" said Johnston, who has a master's degree in business from Harvard
University. It "had a few talking heads like me" and lots of "kids
who were heavy dope users."

"Anybody ... could see that they weren't functioning right
cognitively," he said. "I think it was one of the most effective
prevention tools."

Teens' perception of the physical and psychological risks of
marijuana began rising and their use rates started falling, the
studies found. Twelfth-graders' marijuana use peaked in 1979 at 51%
and stood at 32% last year.

"Because Americans took action, today there are an estimated 860,000
fewer children using drugs than six years ago," President Bush said
at a December White House address announcing the Michigan study's
2007 findings.

The 45-minute confidential questionnaires are given to 50,000
students in eighth, 10th and 12th grade each year, and there are
cumulative data on more than 1 million students.

The Council of Europe began a similar study 15 years ago -- a project
that now involves 45 countries. Around the world, researchers have
drawn from the study methods used by Johnston's group.

"They are idols for some of us," Gerhard Gmel, a senior scientist at
the Swiss Institute for the Prevention of Alcohol and Drug Problems,
said from Lausanne, Switzerland.

Even a leading voice for legalizing marijuana expressed "high esteem"
for Johnston's work.

"Johnston cannot be controlled, cannot be manipulated in the way
other federal researchers can," said Allen St. Pierre, executive
director of NORML, a non-profit public-interest lobby.

Thirty-three years of data have convinced Johnston that the single
best way to cut teen drug abuse is to get information on drug dangers
into the hands of teens. Focusing primarily on cutting supply won't
work, he said.

Perhaps surprisingly, Johnston said teen smoking, not teen drug
abuse, probably is where his group's work has made the most
difference. Most of the 400,000 Americans killed by smoking each year
started as young people.

Public alarm after Johnston documented a spike in smoking by young
teens in the "Joe Camel" era of the early 1990s helped drive 1998's
$206 billion tobacco industry settlement. That agreement with the
states prohibited the targeting of youth in cigarette ads.

"That's probably our most important contribution," he said.