STUDY: DRUG TALKS WORK

Parenting: An Organization Fighting Substance Abuse Finds That Frequent
Discussions With Children Are The Most Effective.

Parents who talk to children about the risks of illicit drugs
sometimes despair that their warning goes in one ear and out the
other. But the message just might stick in a young brain if it gets
repeated enough, according to a study of parental and adolescent
attitudes to be released today.

The study by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, a non-profit
coalition best known for its anti-drug advertisements, also reported a
dramatic disconnection between parents and children in getting the
message through. The study is being released over the Internet, at
www.drugfreeamerica.org.

Ninety-eight percent of the parents in the study said they talked with
their children about drugs, but only 65 percent of teen-agers recalled
having such a conversation. And 27 percent of teen-agers said they
learned a lot from their family about the hazards of drugs.

Though virtually all the parents said they raised the issue of drugs
with their teen-agers, fewer than half, or 48 percent, said they had
done so four or more times in the previous year.

Not surprisingly, the study reported that the more adolescents hear
from parents about the risks, the less likely they are to use drugs,
even if they fail to heed the advice altogether.

Of the teen-agers in the study who said they heard nothing at home
about the risks of drugs, 45 percent said they had smoked marijuana
within the past year. One-third of those who said they learned a
little at home used marijuana in the same period. But among teen-agers
who said they learned a lot, only 26 percent said they smoked
marijuana, the drug of choice after alcohol and tobacco.

Comparable reductions were reported in the use of inhalants,
hallucinogens like LSD, and crack cocaine.

When parents hesitate to tell their children about drugs, said Stephen
Dnistrian, executive Vice president of the partnership, "We can make a
pretty safe assumption that there is probably not a lot of
communication between parent and child about a lot of things."

The latest Partnership Attitude Tracking Study, the 12th such study
since 1987, was conducted last year by Audits and Surveys Worldwide
Inc., a market research firm based in New York. It sampled 6,852
teen-agers 13-18, 2,358 children 9-12 and 809 parents around the
United States. The margin of error in the responses was 1.8 percent
for teen-agers, 2.8 percent for preteens and 3.9 percent for parents.