WELCOME TEEN DRUG-USE DECLINE

A survey showing significant declines in the use of "Ecstasy" and other
illicit substances by U.S. teen-agers reaffirms the importance of education
programs that minimize this threat to our youth. And the accompanying rise
in teen awareness of Ecstasy's hazards is no coincidence.

Those welcome trends have been documented in a "Monitoring the Future"
survey conducted for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services by
the University of Michigan's Institute of Social Research. Lloyd Johnston,
a social psychologist at the school, explained: "We have been saying for
some time that the sharp rise in Ecstasy use would not turn around until
young people began to see this drug as more dangerous."

The use of Ecstasy, a synthetic drug that's part hallucinogen and part
stimulant, soared in the 1990s due in large part to the misperception that
it was "a safe high." Yet that drug causes kidney, heart and brain damage -
and in some tragic overdose cases, death.

Various government and private initiatives to debunk the potentially fatal
myth of Ecstasy's supposedly benign effects are apparently paying off: The
researchers reported that 52 percent of U.S. 12th-graders surveyed this
year said they knew Ecstasy was dangerous. That's up from only 38 percent
in 2000.

American teens are also using marijuana, tobacco and alcohol in lower
numbers - again, with the help of education programs that relentlessly
emphasize the dangers inherent in their use. Tobacco-use numbers were
particularly encouraging, with 26.7 percent of 12th-graders saying they had
smoked in the last month - a steep drop from the 36.5 percent of just five
years earlier.

That doesn't mean the use of illegal drugs, alcohol and tobacco aren't a
problem for U.S. teens. The overall rates are still alarmingly high.

The declines do mean, however, that prevention programs, when properly
implemented, can help our young people understand the hazards of that use -
and motivate them to resist those temptations.