MORE GIRLS INTO DRUGS

Girls are catching up to boys in experimenting with drugs, a survey
shows.

Analysis of drug use by a sample of teenagers in the Federal
Government's National Drug Strategy household survey found that double
the number of females aged 14 to 19 years have tried cocaine and
heroin compared to males.

National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre researcher Louisa Degenhardt
cautioned that the actual number of girls experimenting was quite
small: only eight out of more than 800 had tried cocaine, and nine had
tried heroin in the last year.

However, it was the first time that girls had exceeded boys in surveys
of drug experimentation.