USE OF DRUGS BY TEENS SPIKED DURING CLINTON YEARS, STUDY SAYS

Washington -- Youth drug use in America increased sharply during the
eight years of the Clinton administration, and the number of
drug-related episodes in emergency rooms are now at historic highs,
according to figures in a national report on drug policy to be
released today.

The sobering news comes during a time when the federal government
committed huge amounts of new money recently to fight the problem,
increasing funding to $19.2 billion this year from $13.4 billion in
1996, an average increase of more than $1 billion a year.

But Barry R. McCaffrey, director of the Office of the National Drug
Control Policy, will argue in a White House news conference that the
drug problem among youths in particular is getting better.

To support his position, he will cite a 21 percent decrease in use
from 1997 to 1999, perhaps the first signs from a widely praised
anti-drug media campaign. Still, drug use among those aged 12-17 was
exactly the same in 1999 as it was in 1996, when McCaffrey became
drug czar: in both years, 9 percent of those youths surveyed
acknowledged using illegal drugs sometime during the previous month,
according to the national survey. And in 1993, when Clinton first
took office, only 5.7 percent of teens said they used illegal drugs.

"We've got a long ways to go," said Joseph Califano, chairman and
president of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at
Columbia University and a former secretary of Health, Education and
Welfare.