TEEN DRUG USE REMAINS UNCHANGED

After several years of declines, drug use among Americn teens held
steady during 1999, according to the Monitoring the Future study
released today by the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research.

"We are down some from the recent peak levels in overall illicit drug
use by American teen-agers, which were reached in 1996 and 1997, but
not much of that improvement occurred this year," said Michigan
researcher Lloyd D. Johnston. "I am hopeful that this is just a pause
in a longer-term decline. In fact, we saw such a pause in the '80s,
in the middle of what turned out to be a continuing decline in drug
use."

Drugs that showed little change in use this year included marijuana,
amphetamines, hallucinogens, tranquilizers and heroin. There was a
statictically significant drop in the use of crack cocaine among both
eighth- and 10th-graders, following several years of gradually
increasing use.

The use of anabolic steroids by males in their early to mid-teens
increased slightly in 1999, a change that researchers attributed to
the publicity surrounding home run king Mark McGwire's use of
androsteneione before he announced that he had stopped using the
steroid early this year. "Surely it gave them the idea it could make
them stronger, though we have no questions dealing directly with that
belief," Johnston said.

The Michigan drug study has been tracking high school seniors for 25
years, while following the drug habits of eighth and 10th graders for
the past nine years.

A related Michigan study found that the proportion of teens who are
cigarette smokers declined somewhat this year, although 34.6 percent
of high school seniors said that they had smoked one or more
cigarettes in the past month. "Over one-third of today's young people
are active smokers by the time they leave high school," Johnston said.
"In fact, more than one in every six is an active smoker as early as
eighth-grade. These rates are well above smoking rates in the early
90's, when teen smoking began to increase substantially."