PARENTS LESS LIKELY TO DISCUSS DRUGS

Parents of teenagers are slacking off when it comes to talking to kids
about illegal drugs, a survey released Tuesday indicates. The survey of
parental attitudes toward teenage drug use, undertaken by The Partnership
for a Drug-Free America, shows that today's parents aren't explaining the
risk of drug use to their kids as did parents of teenagers just a few years
ago.

Only 85% of parents in the survey taken last year said they had talked to
their children at least once in the last 12 months about drugs. That
compares with 98% in 1997 who said they had.

The danger in not talking is that parents convey a lax attitude toward
illegal drug use to their children, says Steve Dnistrian, executive vice
president of the partnership. The group is a coalition of public relations
and advertising executives who create ads aimed at discouraging drug use in
conjunction with the White House.

The reason parents aren't talking: Today's parents came of age when pot
smoking reached an all time high and they feel that talking to their kids
about drugs would be hypocritical, Dnistrian says.

The survey of 1,205 parents also indicated that they see less risk in using
certain drugs, such as marijuana. In fact, 11% of the parents surveyed said
they used marijuana in the past year.

"This is a new generation of parents with a definitively different take on
the relative risk of drugs," Dnistrian says.

The average age of parents of today's teens is 42, which put them in high
school when drug use was at its peak, the study says. In 1979, for
instance, 60% of high school seniors reported using marijuana at least
once, according to the Monitoring the Future study conducted by the
University of Michigan.

Despite the trend, most parents remain concerned about drug use. Slightly
more than half of those surveyed said they would be upset if their child
even experimented with marijuana. And seven out of 10 say that kids should
be forbidden from using drugs at any time.