SURVEY SHOWS RISE IN TEEN DRINKING, SMOKING

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 drivers who have been drinking, according to a survey released
yesterday.

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
children still regularly smoke and drink -- nearly half said they'd
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 percent, up from 5.9 percent in 1991. About 4.2 percent of
students said they had used cocaine in the past 30 days, up from 1.7
percent in 1991.

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

About 46 percent of teenagers said they'd had sex, down from 54 percent in
the 1991 survey. The percentage of sexually active teenagers who had used a
condom increased from 46 percent to 58 percent from 1991 to 1999, but
remained at 58 percent 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 Washington nonprofit group that supports both abstinence and
birth-control education for teenagers.

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

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

Results from the nationwide telephone survey of youths aged 14 and 22 were
to be released today by the center's Institute for Adolescent Risk
Communications. The survey was conducted in May and June by Schulman,
Ronca & Bucuvalas. The margin of error was plus or minus 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 percent to 14.1 percent.

*The number of teenagers who said they rode with a driver who had been
drinking fell from 39.9 percent to 30.7 percent.

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

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

On the Web:

CDC Morbidity/Mortality weekly report www.cdc.gov/mmwr