CAMPAIGN TRIES TO REVERSE RISE IN DRUG ABUSE BY GIRLS IT'S NO LONGER ONLY A
'YOUNG MAN'S PROBLEM'

MENDHAM, N.J. -- As Joe Hennen walks through the halls of DAYTOP Village,
there are nearly as many girls in the long-term drug rehabilitation center
as there are boys.

It hasn't always been this way. When DAYTOP opened in 1991, there was room
for 50 residents, 13 female and 37 male. ''It was hard keeping the 13 female
beds filled,'' says Hennen, the executive director of the facility. ''Drugs
was much more a male problem.'' Two years ago, that changed.

More girls started showing up for treatment, creating a waiting list of four
months.

Now, plans are under way to remodel the facility, so it can house 35 boys
and 35 girls.

Hennen and his staff are seeing a national trend. ''The drug abuse level
among girls is now essentially the same as it is with boys. That's not the
same as it was 10 years ago when it was overwhelmingly a young man's
problem,'' says Barry McCaffrey, director of White House drug policy. The
1999 National Drug Use Survey, which questioned 25,500 young people ages 12
to 17, found that 16% of the girls and 16.7% of the boys had drug problems.
To address the increase in girls' drug use, McCaffrey and Health and Human
Services Secretary Donna Shalala are unveiling an advertising campaign at 10
a.m. today at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.
The campaign focuses solely on drug abuse by adolescent girls. The $7
million ad campaign is part of a five-year, $2 billion government-led media
blitz to address drug abuse.

The ads feature Olympic gold medal figure skater Tara Lipinski and Brandi
Chastain, a member of the 1999 U.S. Women's World Cup soccer team. The
message: ''There's never been a better time to be a girl. There's never been
a better time to be what you are, a force to be reckoned with, a girl.
There's never been a better time not to use drugs.

Don't blow it.'' McCaffrey says girls with drug issues bring a different set
of problems with them than boys do: They are more likely to be sexually
abused or fall victim to domestic violence.

They also run an increased risk of unsafe sexual practices, he says.

''Many young girls go through a period of time where their self-esteem is
overly dependent on external factors.

Drugs help them, they believe, with that vulnerability,'' McCaffrey says.
''Tara Lipinski is telling them if they want to get high, do it through
sports.'' Not everyone agrees the ads will help. Ethan Nadelmann, director
of the Lindesmith Center, questions whether the ads will help turn kids away
from drugs or ''are we reaching kids that are not going to use drugs
anyway?'' He suggests more money be spent on expanding organized
after-school activities and treatment. ''The question has to be what's your
fallback strategy for the teenagers who decide to just say yes to drugs,''
he says. At DAYTOP, the residents and counselors think the advertisements
will have an impact.

At the very least, they open up discussions about drugs. ''Mostly what the
girls are looking for here is acceptance and a little self-esteem and a
little self-worth,'' says Carolyn Wilson, 37, a DAYTOP counselor and a
recovering addict.

She began smoking marijuana when she was 13 and descended into prostitution
before she began her recovery. Ronneesha, 17, has been a resident at DAYTOP
for two months.

She is HIV-positive. Her mother has AIDS, and her father is dead. She
started using drugs when she was 12. By the time she was 15, she was
prostituting herself to earn money for crack cocaine.

In the environment she grew up in, there were no positive messages about
staying away from drugs, she says. She thinks the advertisements might have
helped. Now, she has a message of her own: ''Stay away from drugs.

They are no good for you. They don't make your life better, and eventually,
you're going to die. There's nothing else to it. You see where it got me.''