IS ZERO TOLERANCE OF YOUTH DRUG USE WORKING?

No, Say Some Critics Of The `War On Drugs.' They Seek Education Programs
That Emphasize Knowledge Over Complete Abstinence

Reducing the risks of drug taking, rather than preaching zero tolerance,
may be the most realistic way to get young people safely through
adolescence in an age of broad legal and illicit drug use, say educators
and parents who question whether the government1s "war on drugs" is a
losing battle.

Tweaking the slogan Just Say No, advocates of a new approach called Just
Say Know are calling for a public health education campaign that broadens
young people's knowledge about all drugs.

Drug education as it has been traditionally taught is based on flawed
goals, they say, and by refusing to settle for nothing short of complete
abstinence, current efforts are unrealistic and doomed to failure.

The level of drug use by young people has increased in this decade. A 1998
University of Michigan study for the National Institute on Drug Abuse found
there was a slight decline in drug use among teen-agers in 1997, but in the
six previous years the number of youngsters who tried a drug climbed
significantly. Between 1991 and 1997, eighth-graders who experimented with
drugs jumped from 19 to 29 percent; 10th-graders from 31 to 50 percent and
12th graders from 44 to 54 percent.

"One of the problems with conventional drug education is the notion that we
have the ability to prevent experimentation with drugs among teen-agers,"
said Marsha Rosenbaum, director of the Lindesmith Center-West, a drug
policy research group in San Francisco.

"If you combine the nature of teen-agers, which is risk-taking behavior,
and the availability of a range of substances, it seems to me it makes
substance experimentation almost inevitable," said Rosenbaum.

According to proponents, the harm reduction approach, first developed in
Great Britain and Australia, accepts the reality of drug use and works to
minimize the dangers by providing information about, rather than against,
drugs.

A good place to begin is with caffeine, said Lynn Zimmer, a professor of
sociology at Queens College at the City University of New York who
specializes in drug policy issues and drug education.

She worries that school programs and television ads stressing the
debilitating consequences of hard drugs like heroin and cocaine may be
abstractions to most children. Rather, she says, educators should deliver
age-appropriate information about caffeine, nicotine and alcohol, drugs
that young people are much more likely to encounter.

Recent studies would seem to support doubts about the effectiveness of
current drug programs. Several studies have shown that Project D.A.R.E.,
the drug education program taught by police officers in 10,000 communities
nationwide, has no significant long-term effects on drug use. In the most
recent study (released August 1, 1999), researchers at the University of
Kentucky found that 20-year-olds who were schooled in the D.A.R.E.
curriculum a decade earlier did not use any fewer drugs than those who did
not go through the program.

Zimmer isn1t surprised by the findings. The current focus on the horrors
of substance abuse is similar to the vitriolic and ultimately impotent
criticism of alcohol by the Women1s Christian Temperance Movement in the
late 19th century, she says.

"I wouldn1t say we have any evidence this sort of thing works. It1s not
just a couple of years of saying they really haven1t proved themselves.
It1s a century."

Charlie Parsons, executive director of D.A.R.E. America, countered that the
only thing wrong with his program is that children need more of it. The
program is traditionally taught at the elementary school level, and the
group is pushing educators to adopt it in middle and senior high schools as
well.

"If you give kids seventeen piano lessons in the sixth grade and they never
touch it again, and then at twenty you say, 'Play us a song,' what is going
to happen?" he asks. D.A.R.E. won1t stop the problem and isn1t a silver
bullet, but it helps to change attitudes about drugs, he says.

Seventy-five percent of public school districts agree and use the D.A.R.E.
program. But one small, grassroots group is adopting a different approach.

Since 1982, Mothers Against Misuse and Abuse has been taking its slide
presentation, "Think Smart About Drugs" across the country. The
organization was founded by a group of mothers in northern Oregon who were
disturbed that while the availability of all drugs, especially prescription
and over-the-counter brands, was growing, there was no easily accessible
source of information about them.

The group encourages potential users of all ages to ask themselves 7
questions before they take any drug:

- -- What is the name of the chemical?

- -- What part of the body does it affect?

- -- What is the correct dosage?

- -- What drug interactions will occur?

- -- What allergic reactions can occur?

- -- Will it produce tolerance?

- -- Is it habit forming?

"Drug education should be like driver1s education and gun safety
education," said Sandee Burbank, MAMA1s founder and executive director.
"Find good, accurate information." If well informed, most people make
decisions in their own best interest, she added.

In large measure, the successful drug education of children rests on trust,
experts agree. If youngsters find out that even part of an antidrug message
is inaccurate and or an ideological tool, there is the risk they will never
come back or listen again.

Rosenbaum recalled an interview she had with an addicted woman 20 years
ago, which she included in a 1994 policy statement for the National Council
on Crime and Delinquency. Rosenbaum said when she asked the young woman how
she ended up in jail addicted to heroin, "I will never forget what she told
me."

The addicted woman said, "When I was in high school they had these so-
called drug education classes. They told us if we used heroin we would
become addicted. They told us if we used marijuana we would become
addicted. Well, we all tried marijuana and found we did not become
addicted, so we figured the entire message was B.S. I then tried heroin,
got strung out, and here I am."

Rosenbaum said: "We don1t know what works to prevent substance abuse. The
idea of harm reduction is so new we really don1t have an evaluation of it
yet. But we have a certain level of confidence that if teens are given
accurate information they will tailor their behavior to minimize the risk."