ADOLESCENTS IN RURAL AREAS MORE LIKELY TO USE DRUGS

SOCIAL ISSUES: Report finds risks higher than for their urban counterparts.

WASHINGTON - Adolescents in small-town and rural America are much more
likely than their peers in urban centers to have used drugs, according to a
private study released Wednesday.

The report urges the government to reverse the trend by funding the war on
drugs in nonmetropolitan areas like it does in foreign countries such as
Colombia.

Eighth-graders in rural America are 104 percent likelier than their
counterparts in big cities to use amphetamines, including methamphetamines,
and 50 percent likelier to use cocaine, according to the study released by
the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.

The study also found that eighth-graders in rural areas are 83 percent more
likely to use crack cocaine, and 34 percent more likely to smoke marijuana
than their urban counterparts.

"While people may erroneously associate drug abuse with urban communities,
drug abuse attacks our small cities and rural areas with equal ferocity,"
said Barry McCaffrey, director of the White House Office Of National Drug
Control Policy.

The figures, based primarily on 1999 data, were presented at the U.S.
Conference of Mayors' winter meeting in Washington.

The threat of drugs to teens and children "is aggravated in small and
midsize towns, cities and counties that lack the resources and experience
available to large metropolitan concentrations to combat this problem,"
said Joseph A. Califano Jr., president of the research group.

Califano called on the Clinton administration and Congress to put together
an "emergency aid" package to fight drugs in rural America that would match
"dollar-for-dollar" the two-year, $1.6 billion aid plan that the Clinton
administration proposed to Colombia, in part to assist with anti-drug
efforts there.