GETTING SMART ABOUT DRUGS

More teenagers are turning their backs on cigarettes and illicit drugs,
according to a federal study that looked at 8th-, 10th- and 12th-graders,
and the decline in use is certainly encouraging.

Smoking has been cut in half compared to the mid 1990s, and illegal drug
use is down by a third compared to 1996.

But despite these positive trends, there's troubling data in the study that
was done by the University of Michigan for the National Institute on Drug
Abuse. The use of inhalants, such as glues and aerosols, increased in all
three groups after years of decline. The survey showed a slight increase in
underage drinking among older teens, and the drug Oxycontin was one of the
only illegal substances that showed an increase in use.

Overall, the results show that a sustained effort to educate young people
and discourage substance abuse can be effective. Anti-smoking efforts, for
instance, have been tremendously successful: cigarette use has declined for
eight years in a row.

In 1996, 49 percent of eighth-graders surveyed had tried cigarettes; this
year, only 28 percent had done so. Among 10th-graders, the percentage of
teens who had ever smoked dropped from 61 percent in 1996 to 41 percent
this year, and for 12th-graders, the drop was from 65 percent to 53 percent.

While the high cost of cigarettes and stricter marketing controls get some
of the credit, anti-smoking ads have had an impact, too. Nearly
three-fourths of the 12th-graders surveyed this year said that they would
prefer not to date a smoker -- up from only a third in 1977.

"We know that young people have come to see cigarette smoking as more
dangerous, while they also have become less accepting of cigarette use,"
said the lead researcher for the study.

If young people can be persuaded not to light up because of the risk of
cancer, emphysema and heart disease, it's clear that more needs to be done
to educate them about the considerable risk involved in using inhalants.

Just one session of repeated inhalant use can cause cardiac arrest or
oxygen levels low enough to cause suffocation. And these potentially deadly
substances are legal and easily accessible from the garage or cabinet.

It's awful to think that a youngster who's smart enough to know that
cigarettes can kill might not realize how dangerous an aerosol can be.

This survey shows that kids have gotten smarter about a lot of things when
it comes to substance abuse, but it also shows that we need to keep on
educating them.