COCAINE USE UP AMONG TEENS IN SURVEY

ATLANTA -- More teenagers are using cocaine and regularly smoking and
drinking, but an increasing number are also wearing seat belts and refusing
to ride with a driver who's been drinking, according to a survey released
Thursday.

The annual survey, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention in schools across the country, examined the behavior of 13,600
high school students.

The survey found injury and violence-related behaviors have fallen, but
kids still regularly smoke and drink--nearly half said they had consumed
more than one alcoholic beverage more than once in the month before the
survey. The number of teenagers who said they had tried cocaine in their
lifetime rose to 9.4%, up from 5.9% in 1991. About 4.2% of students said
they had used cocaine in the last 30 days, up from 1.7% in 1991.

"We still have plenty of work to do," said Laura Kann, a researcher in the
CDC's National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.

About 46% of teenagers said they'd had sex, down from 54% in the 1991
survey. The percentage of sexually active teenagers who had used a condom
increased from 46% to 58% from 1991 to 1999, but then remained there
through 2001.

That points to a failure of "abstinence-only" sex education programs
favored by the White House, said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for
Youth, a nonprofit group that supports both abstinence and birth-control
education for teens.

"The implication is clear, and yet the current administration ignores it.
If you give young people information about how to protect themselves, they
use it," Wagoner said in a statement.

A separate survey of youths' risky behaviors by the University of
Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center found that a third of 900
teens queried said they had either smoked cigarettes or marijuana, drunk
alcohol or gambled for money within the last 30 days.

Results from the nationwide telephone survey of youths ages 14 to 22 were
to be released Friday by the center's Institute for Adolescent Risk
Communications. The survey had a margin of error of 3.3 percentage points.

Other findings from the CDC survey:

* The number of teenagers who said they never or rarely wore a seat belt
fell from 25.9% to 14.1%.

* The number of teens who said they rode with a driver who'd been drinking
fell from 39.9% to 30.7%.

* The percentage of teens in a daily physical education class fell from
41.6% in 1991 to 32.2% a decade later.

* The percentage of students who carried a weapon decreased from 26.1% in
1991 to 17.4% in 2001.