SURVEY FINDS DROP IN ILLEGAL DRUG USE BY TEENS IN 1998

Alcohol, tobacco consumption shows little evidence of change

An annual federal survey indicates that illegal drug use among U.S. teens
fell slightly in 1998, but found little evidence of change in their use of
alcohol or tobacco.

Although the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse did not gather separate
statistics for Texas or Houston, a local drug abuse expert said the
findings, as described to him, sound about right.

"I think we're seeing pockets of change," said Mel Taylor, executive
director of Houston Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse.

"But where I see the illicit use of drugs down in some areas," Taylor added,
"I see the continued and sustained use of alcohol and tobacco among
teen-agers."

The reasons are simple, he said: advertising and availability.

"Alcohol is available in their parents' refrigerators or bars, and
unfortunately there are still many sales to minors."

Taylor said a bipartisan federal effort has spent millions of dollars on
billboards and broadcasts to get across the message that illicit drugs can
kill.

"Those messages, I think, have been extremely effective," Taylor said. "What
they have not included in any of them was alcohol."

Taylor said the council's 18 offices here see 67,000 clients a year, about
30 percent of them juveniles, and take 200,000 phone calls.

While local drug statistics were not immediately available, Taylor said use
of crack cocaine appears to be on the decline among teens here.

But this is partly offset, he said, by a rise in the popularity of
methamphetamines, which are cheap and sold without prescriptions as diet
pills.

Taylor said there is some use of heroin in Houston, but the city has been
lucky to escape the wave of usage that plagues some cities.

The survey findings for 1998 were released Wednesday in Washington, by
Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala and Barry McCaffrey,
President Clinton's drug policy adviser.

"It looks like we have turned the corner with today's report," Shalala said.

She cited its findings that 9.9 percent of respondents in the 12-to-17 age
group had used some sort of illicit drug in the last month, down from 11.4
percent in 1997.

Overall, the survey acknowledges, teen drug use has risen through much of
the 1990s and remains much higher than in 1992.

Marijuana, the most popular illicit drug, was used by 8.3 percent of those
in the 12-to-17 group, down from 9.4 percent in 1997.

But a graph of marijuana use by teens over the past two decades -- as
reported on the survey, at least -- resembles a roller coaster. It peaked in
1979 at 14.2 percent, fell to 3.4 percent in 1992, and zoomed back to 8.2
percent in 1995.

National figures on alcohol use and abuse showed little change in recent
years, either overall or among those who cannot legally buy such beverages.

Among the latter, ages 12 through 20, 30.6 percent said they had consumed
alcohol in the last month, 15.2 percent said they had engaged in binge
drinking (five or more drinks on the same occasion), and 6.9 percent
reported heavy use (five or more days of binge drinking during the month).

While adults were more likely to drink than teens, both groups were about
equally likely to report drinking excessively.

Among those 21 and older, 52 percent reported drinking in the previous
month, 15.7 percent reported binge drinking and 5.9 percent reported heavy
use.

Fewer than 1 percent of those surveyed reported cocaine use, and the share
of youths who reported using inhalants fell from 2 percent to 1.1 percent
from 1997 to 1998.

The share of tobacco smokers in the overall population continued to fall,
from 29.6 percent to 27.7 percent during the year, but young adults were
bucking that trend.

In 1994, 34.6 percent of respondents in the 18-to-25 age group smoked, but
by 1998 the share had risen to 41.6 percent.

Smoking was reported by 18.2 percent of youths ages 12 to 17, about the same
as in 1997.

But those youths who did smoke were more than 11 times as likely as
nonsmoking youths to use illicit drugs, and 16 times as likely to drink
heavily.

The survey, conducted first in 1971, queried 25,500 Americans in 1998
through household interviews, with the most sensitive questions asked on a
self-administered questionnaire.

A summary of its findings can be read on the Internet, using the Adobe
Acrobat reader, at http://www.samhsa.gov or obtained free by calling
1-800-487-4890.