PARENTAL WAFFLING MAY BOOST TEENS' MARIJUANA USAGE

ORLANDO, Fla. -- In the '70s, singer Rick James professed in song his love
for Mary Jane, a thinly veiled hipster reference to marijuana.

These days, middle schoolers fire up joints for a morning buzz. It's
reading, 'riting, 'rithmetic and "reefer."

That their teens are smoking pot would upset most parents. But a new
national survey shows parental disdain over marijuana use often loses
something in the translation.

The survey released last week by the Hazelden Foundation in Minneapolis
found that 98 percent of parents would be distressed if their teens tried
pot, and 86 percent have talked to their kids about the drug. Yet, only 40
percent advised their kids against indulging. Just one in five parents
stressed that marijuana is illegal.

"This is a classic failure to communicate," says Carol Falkowski, a senior
research analyst for Hazelden, a nonprofit organization that provides
treatment, education and prevention services for drug dependency.

The Hazelden survey, which measured parents' attitudes and practices
relative to teen-age marijuana use, is the latest in the recently reignited
marijuana debate. Recent months have seen the release of studies validating
the medicinal value of marijuana and waffling on its nature as a "gateway"
drug -- one that precedes the abuse of more dangerous drugs.

A report this month from the National Center on Addiction and Substance
Abuse at Columbia University concluded that children 12 to 17 who smoke
marijuana are 85 times more likely to use cocaine than those who do not.

That's a haunting proposition when you consider that of the 182,000 teens
and children who entered treatment in 1996 for substance abuse, according
to that report, nearly half -- 48 percent -- were admitted for marijuana
abuse or addiction.

Why the upturn in juvenile marijuana abuse? Perhaps, say experts, children
are hazy about public regard for marijuana. The president tried it.
Advocates claim medicinal value. Politicians ponder decriminalizing it. "If
it's medicine, kids figure how can it be harmful," Falkowski says.

So why aren't parents talking to their kids about pot? The reason may be
simple enough.

Of the parents Hazelden surveyed, 41 percent once smoked marijuana. Many
parents probably sucked a few puffs from a joint, giggled and still managed
to reach the middle class. They might not welcome pot use, but the notion
that they did it without negative consequences may dampen the intensity of
their cautions to children.

Things are different today. In the past, adolescents discovered pot in
their late teens or 20s. Now, children too young to view certain movies
without an adult can turn to their locker neighbor for a joint, or name
another child who can supply one.

Parents must speak up, experts say. It's one thing to abhor drug use, but
it is quite another to clearly say so. And, according to Hazelden's poll,
parents aren't saying the right things.

Scott Farmer, chairman of the department of psychiatry at Florida Hospital
in Orlando, says parents often misstep by discussing drugs in an "overly
abstract philosophical level" or "insulting their children by addressing
the issue in black and white -- `It's against the law, don't do it' -- and
close the discussion before the child can be valued as a thinking member of
the household."

Perhaps the most powerful way to immunize children against drug abuse, he
says, is to value the child and his opinions.