U.S. OFFICIALS HAIL DECLINE IN DRUG USE BY TEENAGERS

WASHINGTON -- Illicit drug use by American teenagers dropped sharply last
year, with fewer than one in 10 youths saying they currently use cocaine,
marijuana or other illegal drugs, according to a federal survey released
Wednesday.

While illegal drug use across all age groups remained steady, the decline in
teen use marked a significant departure from what had been nearly a
decadelong rise in use among youngsters and was swiftly heralded by Clinton
administration officials.

"In the battle against illicit drugs, we've turned the corner," said Health
and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, who presented the findings at a
news conference with National Drug Control Policy Director Barry McCaffrey.

Shalala pleased

Shalala and other officials credited the drop to increased anti-drug efforts
on the part of parents, schools and the government.

"The message is finally getting through," she said.

According to the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, 9.9 percent of
youths aged 12 to 17 reported that they were currently using illegal drugs
in 1998, compared with 11.4 percent in the same age category the year
before.

But Wednesday's report, which surveyed 25,500 Americans aged 12 and older,
also found no substantial change in overall drug use across age groups. The
survey estimated that last year 13.6 million Americans, or 6.2 percent of
the population 12 or older, were current drug users -- defined as those who
had used an illicit drug at least once in the 30 days before the survey.
This did not represent a significant decline from the estimated 13.9 million
drug users in 1997, administration officials said.

Overall drug use in the country remained level in large part because
increases among young adults aged 18 to 25 offset the drop among youths. The
survey estimated that 16.1 percent of young adults were current drug users
last year, up from 14.7 percent in 1997 and the highest level recorded in
the 1990s.

Officials noted that this increase was consistent with a demographic bulge
of drug users who were teenagers in the mid-1990s.

"If you don't affect youth attitudes at ages 9 to 17, you put a bubble into
the system and we end up with rates of drug abuse downstream that are
increased," said McCaffrey. "We've got to affect our children in the middle
school years and the high school years."

According to the annual survey, drug use among 12- to 17-year-olds hit a
peak of 16.3 percent in 1979, and declined during the 1980s to reach a low
point of 5.3 percent in 1992, the year President Clinton was first elected.
Since then, estimated current drug use by 12- to 17-year-old Americans has
risen every year except in 1996 and 1998.

This trend led some to discount the latest report's findings.

"The truth is that drug-use trends fluctuate over time," said Rob Stewart, a
senior policy analyst at the Drug Policy Foundation, which has been critical
of the administration's anti-drug efforts. "We can't look at one-year
results and fight youth drug use in such narrow increments. Washington
budgets in annual increments, but social trends don't move in the same way."

Cause for concern

Joseph Califano, a Cabinet secretary in the Carter administration who is now
president of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at
Columbia University in New York, applauded the drop among teenagers, but
noted, "There's no question we've got a long way to go to get back to (the)
'92 (level) and we ought to get below that. . . . Saying the country has 13
(million) or 14 million current drug users is not something that anybody is
going to applaud."

Califano also pointed to the "very bad news" that "African-Americans and
Hispanics are being savaged" by drug use. One of the largest relative
increases measured by the survey was in the use of cocaine by Latinos, which
jumped from 0.8 percent in 1997 to 1.3 percent in 1998, the highest level
since 1992. The survey also reported increases in the use of marijuana by
both blacks and Latinos, compared with a slight decline in marijuana use by
whites.