STUDY FINDS TEEN DRUG USE HIGHER IN RURAL AREAS

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 alarming trend by funding the war on drugs in nonmetropolitan
areas as well as it does in foreign countries like Colombia.

Eighth-graders in rural America are 104 percent likelier than those 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
mid-size towns, cities and counties that lack the resources and experience
available to large metropolitan concentrations to combat this problem,"
said Joseph 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 the Clinton
administration proposed to Colombia, in part to assist with anti-drug
efforts there.