20% SAY THEY USED DRUGS WITH A PARENT

Among Reasons: Boomer Culture And Misguided Attempts To Bond

Teen Addicts Point To Parents

They are scenes that paint a startling picture of the drug culture's legacy
on American home life: A teenage girl shares her hopes and dreams with her
mother - as they binge on methamphetamines. A boy bonds with his father
over a marijuana-filled bong.

For the vast majority of families, scenes such as these are hard to fathom.
But counselors who deal with teen addicts across the USA say that parents'
complicity has become a significant factor in putting kids on a path to
drug dependency.

A new survey of nearly 600 teens in drug treatment in New York, Texas,
Florida and California indicated that 20% have shared drugs other than
alcohol with their parents, and that about 5% of the teens actually were
introduced to drugs - usually marijuana - by their moms or dads.

The survey follows a report from 1999 by the Partnership for a Drug-Free
America in which 8% of teens in the overall population who said they had
been offered drugs indicated that at least some of the offers came from a
parent.

Classmates or neighborhood friends remain far and away the most likely
sources of drugs for teens. But counselors say the latest survey documents
a troubling trend: Some baby boomers who came of age as the drug culture
exploded in the '60s and '70s are enablers for their children who
experiment with drugs.

"I don't think we're at the peak of it yet," says David Rosenker , vice
president of adolescent services at the Caron Foundation, a treatment
program in Wernersville, Pa., that sees 6,000 kids a year. "We already see
it a lot: baby boomer parents who are still using and still having a
problem with their use. They're buying for their kids, smoking pot with
their kids, using heroin with their kids.

"When I started (working with youths) in the mid-'70s, this was not happening."

Addiction specialists say it is happening now because of a range of factors
that show how the rise in recreational drug use has altered traditional
parent-child relationships, regardless of families' race or economic status:

A small percentage of boomer parents have never given up drugs, and so
their children see drug use and addiction as normal.

Some parents believe that sharing an occasional joint with their teenager
can ease family tensions and make a parent seem more like a buddy in whom
their teen can confide. Parents also might view it as an easy way to
explain their own past drug use.

Other parents regard marijuana use as a relatively harmless rite of passage
for young adults. It was for boomers; almost 60% of those born in the USA
from 1946 through 1964 say they have smoked pot at some point in their
lives, a Partnership survey found in 1999. But since boomers' days of
rebellion, the drug landscape has changed. A smaller percentage of youths
are using drugs regularly, but marijuana and other drugs are more potent
than ever, and first-time users are more likely to be in middle school than
in college.

Many parents - 75% in the Partnership survey - say they believe that most
people will try illegal drugs at some point. Some parents, counselors say,
naively figure that they're "protecting" their kids by allowing or even
encouraging some drug use in the home.

'Do it at home'

Pamela Straub, 43, of Whittier, Calif., developed a drug habit in junior
high school. So when her own daughter, Felicia Nunnink, discovered her
stash of marijuana in a living room cabinet, Straub decided to lay down
some rules.

"I just didn't want her out on the streets," says Straub, whose own drug
use left her addicted to a range of drugs and homeless at one point. "I
told her I'd rather have her do it at home where I could keep an eye on
her. I smoked pot with Felicia. I can't really say if I was right or wrong.
Well, now I guess I'm pretty sure I was wrong."

Straub says she has been drug-free for more than five years.

Nunnink, now 22, looks back fondly to her teenage days when she shared
joints with her mother. Mellowed by the marijuana, she says she felt close
to her, and they talked - more like friends than mother and daughter.

"At the time, I wanted to do it because I thought it was the only way to
get a bond with my mom," says Nunnink, who moved on to methamphetamines,
which she and her mother also shared. "It was cool. My house was where the
kids came over to get high."

But Nunnink soon found she couldn't stop taking drugs. Now she's in
rehabilitation and is thinking about what she would tell children she might
have someday about drugs. "I would be very open with my kids about drugs
and what they did to me. It really messed up my life," she says. "I think
it's a bad idea even to smoke pot in front of kids."

Counselors say that Straub's actions, however well-meaning, show how
parents can blur the boundaries between childhood and adulthood, sowing
confusion for teens.

"We have 35 years of drug culture now," says Mitchell Rosenthal, president
of the Phoenix House drug treatment program in New York, which conducted
the new study of teen addicts.

Rosenthal says he commissioned the study after speaking with three
California teens who had used drugs with their parents. Phoenix House
arranged for USA TODAY to discuss the study with several teens in its program.

"Many people who experimented with drugs in their own adolescence may be
regular users, and many of them have children," he says. "Parents who do
not set limits and who try to be buddies with their kids are doing their
kids a real disservice. Kids have to be helped to control their impulses.
They are not helped by parents who want to jump into the playpen."

Parents set the standard

On the flip side, parents can be a huge influence in steering a child from
drugs, says Steve Dnistrian, executive vice president of the Partnership
for a Drug-Free America. "You have perhaps the most drug-savvy group of
parents ever," he says. "They have been there and done that, and they do
not want their kids using drugs. But we have a disconnect.

"Most of them have a difficulty knowing what to say persuasively on this
issue," Dnistrian says. "Dare the question come up: 'Mom, Dad, did you get
high?' So you avoid it. You don't deal with it. Then someone else deals
with it for you by offering your kids drugs."

Dnistrian recommends honesty. Tell your children what you learned from the
past and set high expectations for them, he advises .

"If you are trying to establish expectations for your teenagers to meet,
and you lower those expectations yourself by essentially giving them a
green light to drink or smoke pot in your house, then you're really pulling
the rug out from under yourself," Dnistrian says. "Parents who say their
kids are going to smoke and drink anyway so they may as well do it here -
that's like setting the standard at 'C.' So don't be surprised if they come
home and tell you they've snorted cocaine or dropped acid. You've opened
the door."

Although the Phoenix House survey covers only teens who already have gotten
into trouble with drugs, Dnistrian says it underscores the vulnerability of
children in families that use drugs.

"It tells you how ingrained substance abuse is in the family structure," he
says. "These parents are so familiar with it and so close to it that they
are willing to pass the joint to their children. This is something we have
to watch."

Blurring traditional roles

In hindsight, Jason, 17, a recovering addict from an upper middle-class
family in Simi Valley, Calif., says he wishes his father had been more of a
parent and less of a buddy when it came to marijuana.

Jason, whose last name is being withheld because he is a juvenile, says he
first tried pot in the sixth grade with some classmates. He managed to hide
signs of his drug use from his parents, who regularly attended his hockey
games, scheduled family outings and vacations and kept tabs on his schoolwork.

Then he made his first drug purchase: a $5 bag of pot. Jason says his
father walked by his room's open door as he was stashing it in a dresser
drawer.

"He told me about his marijuana use," Jason says. "We went into his office,
and he had a (water pipe) and we got high together. I thought he was sooo
cool."

They began smoking together once a week.

"I felt a bond between me and my father when we were getting high," Jason
says. "It's like a father-son experience. I had a warmth inside me like,
'My dad, he's cool.' I love him. We would talk about life."

Jason says his father told him that a little marijuana would be OK if he
kept up his grades, played sports, avoided fights and practiced safe sex.
His father condemned other drugs and despised Jason's cigarette habit, the
teen says.

"He wouldn't see a problem with marijuana if you could handle your
priorities," Jason says.

But Jason couldn't. He started smoking pot almost every day. He began
defying teachers, ditching school and skipping hockey practice. "I was
taking our household pets and selling them for money for drugs," says
Jason, now in drug treatment at a Phoenix House in Orange County, Calif. "I
took my brother's 3-foot iguana and sold it for a bag of weed. That's low."

Jason says marijuana "didn't interfere in any way with (his father's) life.
It did mine. I guess the addicted gene skipped him and hit me." Contacted
by officials at Phoenix House, Jason's parents confirmed his story but
declined to comment further.

This isn't Jason's first shot at getting clean. He spent his 14th birthday
in drug treatment, his 15th at a boot camp for troubled youths, his 16th in
a group home and his 17th at Phoenix House. He wants to spend his 18th
birthday like a typical teenager.

Looking back, he wishes his parents had tightened the reins earlier.

"Kids want parents to be friends," he says. "Parents need to realize it's
more beneficial in the long run for parents to be parents. There are enough
people outside telling us that things that are not OK are OK. Parents
should be a safety zone."

A family's cycle of addiction

In a few families, drug use has been passed on as though it were a tradition.

La,Kiesha, 15, of Southern California, is the third generation of a family
in which members have become addicted to drugs. La,Kiesha says her
grandmother smoked pot regularly and gave her a few puffs when she was 5
years old, to settle her down before bedtime.

La,Kiesha's mother, Latricia, 32, says that while growing up she never
thought of marijuana as a drug. She says her mother was a church-going
licensed nurse who made sure the rent was paid and food was in the pantry,
and who saw marijuana as "a natural herb." Their surname is being withheld
because La,Kiesha is a juvenile.

"My mother didn't look at it as a problem or addiction," Latricia says.
"She felt as long as I was doing things at home, I was out of harm's way."

But the marijuana launched steep, parallel declines for Latricia and her
daughter that landed both of them in rehabilitation.

"They say marijuana is a gateway drug, and it can be," says La,Kiesha, who
eventually moved on to PCP and alcohol abuse. "Marijuana was for the days I
wanted to come down."

La,Kiesha says she stopped smoking and drinking 11 months ago. Her mother,
now a counselor, has been clean for five years. Now La,Kiesha is vowing to
break her family's cycle of drug use.

"I'm going to educate my children about drugs and the harm it can cause.
I'm going to say, 'I don't want you to go down that road,' " La,Kiesha says.

"It's a family history that I want to break."

[inset]
How To Steer Kids From Drugs

Tips for steering children away from drugs, and what to do if you suspect
they are using them:

- - Discuss drug use with your children and establish family rules. It is
extremely important to establish a clear "no drugs" mandate and to make
sure it's communicated clearly to your children.

- - Impose whatever course of discipline your family has decided on for
violating the rules and stick to it. Don't relent because your child
promises never to do it again.

- - Never confront a child who is under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
Wait until he or she is sober, and then discuss your suspicions with your
child calmly and objectively.

- - If you think your child is not being truthful and the evidence is pretty
strong, you might want to have him or her evaluated by a health
professional experienced in diagnosing youths with alcohol- and
drug-related problems.

- - Have your family doctor or local clinic examine your child to rule out
illness or other physical problems.

- - If your child has a pattern of drug use, you will probably need help to
intervene. To find out about drug treatment programs in your area, call
your doctor, local hospital, state or local substance-abuse agencies or
county mental health society for a referral. Your school district also
should have a substance abuse coordinator or a counselor who can refer you
to treatment programs.

Source: U.S. Department of Education